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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


STUDIES 
IN  INTERPRETATION 

KB  A  TS—CL  O  UGH 
MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


BY 


WILLIAM  HENRY  HUDSON 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in  the  Leland 
Stanford  jFttnior  Uiiiversity 


ciD 


NEW  YORK 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

London  :  24  Bedford  Street,   Strand 
1896 


Copyright,  i8q6 

HY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  London 


Ube  1:nict;erboc(;ct-  press,  "new  ]!?orb 


JOHN  KEATS.  15 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that 
when  we  undertake  to  describe  Keats's  mental 
attitude  towards  modern  tendencies,  practical 
or  speculative,  as  an  attitude  of  evasion,  the 
merely  negative  elements  in  this  statement 
are  those  which  point  towards  the  most  sig- 
nificant results.  This  fact  has  indeed  been 
anticipated  in  what  we  have  already  said,  but 
it  is  important  enough  to  justify  a  word  of  re- 
emphasis.  Keats's  unsympathetic  contact  with 
the  modern  world  involved  little  of  active  pro- 
test or  antagonism.  If  he  could  not  enter  into 
the  spirit  of  his  age,  he  did  not,  on  the  other 
hand,  habitually  set  himself  against  it ;  if  he 
was  not  inspired  by  the  revolutionary  fervor  of 
Shelley,  neither  was  he  driven  to  expostulate 
with  Wordsworth,  or  to  jeer  with  Byron.  Place 
Keats  alongside  of  his  characteristic  antithesis 
among  our  great  modern  writers,  Thomas  Car- 
lyle,  and  his  position  at  once  by  contrast  be- 
comes clear.  A  spirit  of  intense  revulsion  from 
the  enlightenment  of  the  century  and  all  its 
works  certainly  characterized  poet  and  prophet 
alike  ;  but  this  spirit  of  revulsion  revealed  it- 
self in    totally  different  ways.      Carlyle   faced 

tion  of  Keats's  Works,  Vol.  i.,  appendix).  Keats  studied 
Dryden's  versification  carefully,  and  with  considerable  ad- 
vantage, before  he  wrote  Lamia  ;  and  the  marked  contrast  on 
the  formal  side  between  this  later  poem,  and  the  "slip-shod" 
Endyniion  is  exceedingly  instructive.  The  reader  will  remem- 
ber Byron's  unmeasured  denunciation  of  Keats  on  the  score  of 
the  latter's  antagonism  to  Pope. 


l6  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

the  Ugly  facts  by  which  he  found  himself  beset 
with  dogged  courage  and  unflagging  energy  ; 
he  wrestled  with  all  the  most  vital  issues  of  his 
age  ;  poured  out  the  vials  of  his  wrath  upon  the 
new  science,  the  new  industrialism,  the  new  de- 
mocracy ;  and  raised  his  voice — the  voice  of  one 
crying  in  the  wilderness — against  the  shams  and 
simulacra,  the  faithlessness  and  godliness  of 
modern  life.  Keats,  on  the  contrary,  simply 
left  these  things  alone.  He  turned  his  back 
upon  a  world  which  was  thus  for  Carlyle  the 
arena  of  a  mighty  spiritual  conflict.  The 
changing  order  of  the  nineteenth-century  world 
absorbed  all  Carlyle's  attention.  By  Keats  it 
was  simply  ignored.  The  one  pulled  with  a 
giant's  strength  against  the  stream  of  tendency. 
The  other  gathered  flowers  upon  the  bank,  and 
carelessly  let  the  turbid  torrent  roll  by. 

And  here  it  should  be  remembered  that  in 
Keats's  own  view  of  the  matter,  it  was  no  part 
of  the  poet's  duty  or  function  to  assume  the 
prophetic  role,  and  undertake  the  guidance  and 
leadership  of  men.  For  Carlyle,  the  poet  was 
a  direct  emissary  of  God,  a  vatcs,  a  seer. 
"  Every  great  poet  is  a  teacher,"  wrote  Words- 
worth ;  "  I  wish  to  be  considered  as  a  teacher 
or  as  nothing."  Shelley,  as  might  be  expected, 
was  consistent  in  his  assertion  of  the  poet's 
high  responsibilities  and  far-reaching  influence. 
"  Poets,"  he  declares,  in  the  closing  passage  of 
his  impassioned  Defence,  "  are  the  hierophants 


JOHN  KEATS.  1/ 

of  an  unapprehended  inspiration  ;  the  mirrors 
of  the  gigantic  shadows  which  futurity  casts 
upon  the  present ;  the  words  which  express 
what  they  understand  not ;  the  trumpets  which 
sing  to  battle,  and  feel  not  what  they  inspire  ; 
the  influence  which  is  moved  not,  but  moves. 
Poets  are  the  unacknowledged  legislators  of  the 
world."  With 'Arnold  and  Lowell  and  Brown- 
ing poetry  has  this  same  vital  quality,  this 
direct  bearing  upon  the  immediate  and  actual 
things  of  life  ;  while  no  reader  is  likely  to  for-' 
get  the  young  Tennyson's  large  claim,  in  the 
poet's  behalf,  to  divinely-given  insight  and 
power  : 

"  The  poet  in  a  golden  clime  was  born, 
With  golden  stars  above  ; 
Dower'd  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn, 
The  love  of  love. 

He  saw  thro'  life  and  death,  thro'  good  and  ill, 

He  saw  thro'  his  own  soul. 
The  marvel  of  the  everlasting  will 

In  open  scroll 

Before  him  lay." 

But  Keats's  interpretation  of  his  art  had  noth- 
ing sacerdotal  or  apocalyptic  about  it.  He  did 
not  pose  as  a  seer,  nor  did  he  ever  show  the 
slightest  tendency  towards  the  didacticism  upon 
which  Wordsworth  fixed  his  mind.    "  To  justify 


1 8  STUDIES  IN-  INTERPRETATION. 

the  ways  of  God  to  men  "  ;  to  throw  Hght 
upon  the  entangled  problems  of  human  life ; 
to  sound  the  battle-cry  of  progress,  firing  the 
strong  with  fresh  enthusiasm,  and  bringing  the 
stragglers  into  line  and  step — all  this  was  alien 
to  his  view  of  the  gay  science  and  its  place  and 
influence  in  our  noisy,  bustling  world.  Poetry 
for  him  meant  relief  from  life's  strain,  sunshine 
lig-liting  its  darkness,  music  amid  its  harsh  dis- 
cord and  confusion — "  a  thing  of  beauty,"  and, 
as  such,  "  a  joy  forever."  His  highest  purpose 
was  to  keep  unfurled 

"  Love's  standard  on  the  battlements  of  song  " — ' 

his  accepted  ideal,  the  love  of  "  the  principle 
of  beauty  in  all  things  "  ;  the  noblest  conceiva- 
ble result  of  poetry  the  gentle  moving  away, 
from  time  to  time,  of  the  pall  by  which  our 
spirits  are  so  constantly  darkened.  Thus  he 
could  write  in  remonstrance  to  Shelley,  poet 
and  would-be  reformer — "  You  will,  I  am  sure, 
forgive  me  for  sincerely  remarking  that  you 
might  curb  your  magnanimity,  and  be  more  of 
an  artist,  and  load  every  rift  of  your  subject  with 
ore."  Life  has  "  burrs  and  thorns  "  in  plenty, 
but  it  is  the  business  of  poetry  to  set  them 
aside,  not  to  feed  upon  them.     Its  great  end  is 

"  that  it  should  be  a  friend 
To  soothe  the  cares  and  lift  the  thoughts  of  man  "  ; 

'  Endymion,  Book  ii. 


JOHN  KEATS.  1 9 

and  that  end  accomplished,  the  poet's  proper 
work  is  done.  This  inspiring  principle  of  all 
his  writing  reaches  something  like  definite 
formulation  in  Sleep  and  Poetry,  and  in  the 
following  passage  is  given  perhaps  its  dis- 
tinctest  enunciation  : 


"  Yet  I  rejoice  :  a  myrtle  fairer  than 
E'er  grew  in  Paphos  from  the  bitter  weeds 
Lifts  its  sweet  head  into  the  air,  and  feeds 
A  silent  space  with  ever-sprouting  green. 
All  tenderest  birds  there  find  a  pleasant  screen, 
Creep  through  the  shade  with  jaunty  fluttering. 
Nibble  the  little  cupped  flowers,  and  sing. 
Then  let  us  clear  away  the  choking  thorns 
From  round  its  gentle  stem  ;  let  the  young  fawns, 
Yeaned  in  after  times,  when  we  are  flown, 
Find  a  fresh  sward  bene:.l!i  it,  overgrown 
With  simple  flowers  ;  let  there  nothing  be 
More  boisterous  than  a  lover's  bended  knee  ; 
Naught  more  ungentle  than  the  placid  look 
Of  one  who  leans  upon  a  closed  book  ; 
Naught  more  untranquil  than  the  grassy  slopes 
Between  two  hills.     All  hail,  delightful  hopes  ! 
As  she  was  wont,  th'  imagination 
Into  most  lovely  labyrinths  will  be  gone. 
And  they  shall  be  accounted  poet  kings 
Who  simply  tell  the  most  heart-easing  things." 

Recoiling  thus  from  both  the  temper  and  the 
mood  of  modern  life,  Keats  consciously  left  the 
obstinate  questions  that  came  up  for  considera- 


20  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

tion,  the  ancient  problems  in  their  modern 
shapes,  the  party-cries,  the  distracting  tumult 
of  practical  affairs,  the  fierce  death-grapple  of 
old  and  new  in  religion,  morality,  society,  to 
take  care  of  themselves  ;  while,  far  from  the 
rush  and  turmoil,  he  lingered  in  his  fairyland 
of  fancy,  in  the  bower  he  had  fashioned  for 
himself, 

u^  "  Full   of   sweet    dreams,    and    health,    and   quiet 
breathing." 

III. 

Before  passing  on  to  inquire  a  little  more 
closely  into  Keats's  temperamental  peculi- 
arities as  self-revealed  in  his  work,  we  may 
here  pause  a  moment  to  notice  the  ob- 
vious fact  that  the  characteristic  trend  of  his 
genius  is  shown  in  the  broadest  possible  Avay 
both  by  his  habitual  choice  of  material,  and  by 
his  treatment  of  such  material  when  chosen. 
The  themes  of  by  far  the  greater  proportion  of 
his  poems  belong,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  to  the 
past — to  the  "  beautiful  tales  which  have  come 
down  from  the  ancient  times  of  that  beautiful 
Greece,"  *  or  the  literature  and  legend-lore  of 
the  romantic  middle  ages.  The  texture  of  his 
work  is  thus  not  woven  out  of  the  stuff  fur- 
nished by  his  own  time.     All  these  themes  are, 

'  Letter  to  his  sister,  Fanny,  Sept.  lo,  1817  (Forman's  edi- 
tion, Vol.  iii.,  p.  78). 


JOHN  KEATS.  21 

moreover,  handled  in  a  singularly  artistic  and 
objective  spirit — a  spirit  at  once  unmodern  and 
unyouthful.  It  Avould  of  course  be  absurd  to 
maintain  that  in  Endymioit,  Lamia,  Hyperion, 
The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  Isabella,  analysis  would 
bring  to  light  no  trace  of  modern  coloring,  no 
touch  of  specifically  modern  sentiment  or 
thought.  In  the  romantic  poems  especially 
these  qualities  are  often  manifest  even  to  the 
superficial  and  uncritical  reader.  Yet  their 
relative  absence — in  other  words,  the  creative 
impersonality  of  all  these  poems — must  none 
the  less  be  set  down  as  remarkable,  particularly 
when  the  age  of  the  writer  is  taken  into  ac- 
count. To  make  this  point  clear,  one  has  only 
to  contrast  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merei with.  Wil- 
liam Morris's  Hill  of  Venus  in  The  Earthly 
Paradise.  The  former  stands  before  us  as  a 
piece  of  well-nigh  flawless  artistic  creation,  un- 
pervaded  by  modern  feeling,  unmarred  by  lyric 
egoism.  The  latter,  subtly  and  weirdly  beau- 
tiful as  it  is,  is  bathed  in  a  "  phantasmagoric 
golden  haze  "  which  often  passes  "  into  twilight 
sadness,"  and  which,  as  Mr.  Stedman  says  of 
the  stories  of  The  Earthly  Paradise  taken  as  a 
whole,  belongs  to  the  poet  and  his  age,  not  to 
the  old  wonder-tale  itself.* 

But  the  artistic  objectivity  of  Keats's  work  is 
exhibited  in    another  equally  important  way. 
In  no  case   does  the  writer  consciously  or  un- 
'  The  Nature  of  Poetry,  p.  131. 


22  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

consciously  make  his  poetry  the  vehicle  for 
the  exposition  of  any  new  theory  concerning 
life  or  man.  In  this  direction  particularly  the 
remarkable  generic  difference  separating  the 
work  of  Keats  from  the  larger  body  of  our 
modern  verse,  with  its  highly  subjective  char- 
acter and  its  insistence  on  ulterior  purposes  and 
meanings,  is  very  vividly  brought  out.  On  this 
question  much  might  be  said  by  way  of  illus- 
tration ;  but  it  will  be  sufificient  if  we  here 
refer  to  the  contrast  presented,  for  example, 
between  such  poems  as  Hyperion  upon  the  one 
hand,  and  the  PrometJiais  Unbound  of  Shelley 
and  the  PromctJieus  of  Lowell,  upon  the  other. 
Shelley,  distinctly  repudiating  any  attempt  "  to 
restore  the  lost  drama  of  -^schylus,"  and  in- 
spired, as  he  confesses,  by  the  "  moral  intent  of 
the  fable,"  deliberately  turns  his  superb  drama 
into  a  choral  prophecy  of  a  regenerated  world.* 
In  the  same  way  Lowell,  just  as  distinctly 
enunciating  his  belief  that  every  poem  should 
contain  a  truth  of  philosophy,  found  himself 
attracted  to  the  often-treated  subject  of  the 
Titan's  struggle  against  Zeus  by  reason  of  its 
modern  capabilities,  and  thus  produced  a  work 
which,  in  his  own  words,  overruns  "  with  true 
radicalism  and  anti-slavery."*  It  is  not  difficult 
to  surmise  to  what  new-world  purposes  such  a 
story  as  that  of  the  downfall  of  the  old  Satur- 

'  See  his  preface. 

"^  Letters^  Vol.  i.,  pp.  71-73. 


JOHN  KEATS.  23 

nian  dynasty,  undertaken  in  Hyperion,  would 
have  lent  itself  in  the  hands  of  either  of  the 
just-mentioned  writers.  The  modern  poet  can, 
indeed,  rarely  borrow  a  subject  from  the  life  of 
the  past  without  in  some  way  breathing  into 
it  a  modern  spirit,  even  if  he  does  not,  as  often 
happens,  select  it  expressly  for  its  aptness  as  a 
medium  for  some  latter-day  gospel  which  he 
may  feel  called  upon  to  expound.  Thus  Ten- 
nyson saturates  the  Idylls  of  the  King  with,  the 
spiritual  atmosphere  of  the  nineteenth  century  ; 
thus  even  Browning,  with  his  strong  historical 
sense,  everywhere  reveals  our  present  tendency 
towards  investigation,  analysis,  the  probing  for 
theory  and  solution ;  thus — to  take  only  a 
couple  of  instances  from  minor  writers — Lewis 
Morris  tags  his  stories  from  Hades  with  latter- 
day  morals,  and  Robert  Buchanan  cannot  touch 
the  legends  of  Pan,  Proteus,  and  Balder  with- 
out impressing  upon  them  a  significance  which 
belongs  not  to  their  own  epoch,  but  to  ours. 
The  method  of  Keats  was  the  objective  and 
artistic  method  in  its  purest  form.  He  was 
drawn  towards  his  material,  not  by  reason  of 
its  real  or  fancied  spiritual  implications  or  bear- 
ings, but  wholly  and  solely  on  account  of  its 
beauty  ;  and  so  long  as  a  story  appealed  to  his 
imagination,  he  never  stepped  aside  to  raise 
any  question  regarding  what  it  was  intended, 
or  could  be  interpreted,  to  prove.  It  is  of 
course  true  that  some  of  the  legends  by  which 


24  STUDIES  IX  INTERPRETATION. 

his  genius  was  fascinated — especially  the  myth 
of  Endymion — having  grown  up  out  of  the 
moral  consciousness  of  the  race,  were  themselves 
already  endowed  with  a  certain  subtle  and  far- 
reaching  ideal  significance.  But  this  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  point  now  under  discussion. 
Our  thesis  is  simi)ly  that  Keats  took  these 
stories  as  he  found  them,  with  or  without  any 
latent  meaning,  as  the  case  might  be  ;  and  that, 
so  accepting  them  as  they  came  down  to  him 
from  the  past,  he  never  sought  to  relate  them 
in  any  way  to  the  special  movements  or  prob- 
lems of  the  period  in  which  he  lived. 

Mr.  Stedman  has  laid  it  down  as  a  general 
principle  that  "  where  a  work  survives  as  an 
exception  to  the  inherent  temper  of  a  people, 
it  is  likely  to  exhibit  greatness  "  ; '  and  he  refers 
to  the  Book  of  Job  as  a  remarkable  illustra- 
tion. It  is  manifest  that  we  may  extend  this 
principle  by  saying  that  when  the  body  of  a 
poet's  work  stands  out  before  us  as  an  exception 
to  the  general  temper  and  tendencies  of  such 
poet's  era,  it  is  certain  to  have  unusual  claims 
upon  critical  attention,  since  it  can  only  have 
preserved  its  vitality  and  power  by  reason  of 
an  unusually  strong  endowment  of  original  life. 
And  the  poetry  of  Keats  may  certainly  be 
indicated  as  an  interesting  case  in  point. 
'  Nature  of  Poei7-y,  p.  86. 


JOHN  KEATS.  25 

IV. 


Passing  now  from  the  consideration  of  these 
more  superficial  manifestations  of  Keats's  aloof- 
ness from  the  general  drift  and  spirit  of  his 
time,  we  need  refer  only  in  brief  to  certain  of 
those  more  positive  declarations  concerning  his 
position  and  point  of  view,  which  are  to  be 
found  here  and  there  in  his  works.  It  is 
obvious  that,  for  the  reasons  already  assigned, 
such  positive  declarations  will  be  found  to  be 
at  once  exceedingly  rare  and  relatively  speak- 
ing meagre  and  unimportant.  None  the  less 
they  demand  a  moment's  attention. 

A  foremost  place  among  the  passages  now  to 
be  noted  must  of  course  be  given  to  the  familiar 
lines  in  Lamia  which  serve  to  sum  up  the  poet's 
antagonism  to  the  spirit  of  science  in  a  kind  of 
formulated  denunciation  : 


"  Do  not  all  charms  fly 
At  the  mere  touch  of  cold  philosophy  ? 
There  was  an  awful  rainbow  once  in  Heaven  ; 
We  know  her  woof,  her  texture  ;  she  is  given 
In  the  dull  catalogue  of  common  things. 
Philosophy  will  clip  an  angel's  Avings, 
Conquer  all  mysteries  by  rule  and  line, 
Empty  the  haunted  air  and  gnomed  mine, 
Unweave  a  rainbow,  as  it  erewhile  made 
The  tender-person'd  Lamia  melt  into  a  shade.' 


26  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

Emphatic  as  these  hnes  are  ia  themselves,  they 
jrain  stranfje  sitrnificance  from  their  context. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  second  part  of  the 
poem  Keats  has  intimated  that 

"  Had  Lycius  Hved  to  hand  liis  story  down 
He  might  have  given  the  moral  a  fresh  frown  "  ; 

and  indeed  we  can  hardly  doubt  but  that  his 
own  interpretation  of  his  singular  experiences 
would  have  differed  very  considerably  from  that 
implied  in  the  above  citation.  Lycius,  let  us 
remember,  is  saved  from  being  seduced  by  the 
serpent-woman  into  making  complete  shipwreck 
of  his  life  only  by  the  knowledge  and  wisdom 
of  the  old  sage  Apollonius,  who  at  a  critical 
moment  comes  to  his  rescue,  strips  off  the 
mask  of  illusion,  and  lays  bare  the  reality  of 
things.  This,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  is  a  curious 
occasion  to  choose  for  an  attack  on  science.  Is 
knowledge  to  be  abused  if  it  reveals  falsehood 
as  falsehood,  points  out  the  hidden  danger 
lurking  under  some  fair  and  attractive  disguise, 
and  thus  snatches  us  from  perils  wherein  we 
should  otherwise  be  ensnared  ?  To  inveigh 
against  "  philosophy  "  because  it  will  not  allow 
us  to  remain  in  undisturbed  possession  of 
pleasant  and  mischievous  illusions,  must  be  de- 
scribed as  merely  childish  ;  yet  such  is  certainly 
the  only  inference  to  be  drawn  from  Keats's 
spirited   protest  when   read   in  immediate  con- 


JOHN  KEATS.  2/ 

nection  with  the  story  of  the  poem.  It  is 
evident,  of  course,  that  Keats  can  have  had 
only  a  very  imperfect  reahzation  of  the  larger 
bearings  of  his  assertions.  He  thinks  only  of 
the  destruction  of  Lamia's  womanly  fascination 
and  the  collapse  of  the  romance  of  Lycius's 
life ;  and  the  logical  issue  of  the  questions 
arising  from  the  incidents  described,  does  not 
seem  greatly  to  interest  him.  Yet  Vv^e  know 
that  on  other  occasions  he  spoke  with  equal 
unguardedness  and  extravagance.  We  have 
Haydon's  word  for  it  that  three  years  before 
the  poem  now  referred  to  saw  the  light — and  it 
should  be  remembered  that  this  fine  work  was 
one  of  its  author's  latest  and  most  mature  pro- 
ductions— Keats  and  Lamb,  while  dining  with 
him  (Haydon)  had  agreed  together  that  "  New- 
ton had  destroyed  all  the  poetry  of  the  rainbow 
by  reducing  it  to  the  prismatic  colours."  '  Along 
with  this  episode  we  may  refer  to  the  poet's 
further  lamentation  over  the  fact  that  the  age 
of  wonder  has  gone — that  "  the  goblin  is  driven 
from  the  hearth  and  the  rainbow  is  robbed  of 
its  mystery."  ^ 

For  Keats,  therefore,  knowledge  emphatically 

'  This  is  what  Haydou  called  "  the  immortal  dinner."  The 
anecdote  is  given  by  the  artist  in  his  Autobiography,  and  is 
reproduced  in  Forman's  edition  of  Keats,  Vol.  ii.,  pp.  36- 
37,  note. 

^  Essay  on  Kean  as  a  Shakespearian  Actor,  in  Forman's 
edition  of  Keats,  Vol.  iii.,  p.  6. 


28  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

meant  disillusion.  To  cxpkiin  the  processes  of 
nature  was  to  remove  them  once  for  all  from 
the  soft  dreamy  atmosphere  of  poetry,  through 
which  they  loomed  dim  but  beautiful,  into  the 
lurid  white  glare  of  actuality,  where  they  stood 
out  gaunt,  naked,  angular,  revolting.  Thus 
with  an  emotional  nature  fatally  out  of  harmony 
alike  with  the  intellectual  achievements  and  the 
intellectual  temper  of  his  age,  he  turned  back 
upon  the  past,  clinging  with  obstinate  per- 
sistency to  that  old  order  of  ideas,  to  that  cos- 
mology of  marvel  and  mystery,  which  he  felt 
to  be  slipping  from  the  grasp  of  the  world,  v/ith 
all  that  beautiful  accumulation  of  legend  and 
myth  which  in  tlic  course  of  ages  had  come  to 
cluster  about  it.  For  him  "  glory  and  loveli- 
ness "  had  indeed  "  passed  away "  from  a 
generation  disenchanted  by  knowledge — a  gen- 
eration that  knows  not  "  Flora  and  old  Pan  " — 
a  generation  to  which  the  visions  of  "  high 
romance  "  no  longer  make  appeal. 

"  Helicon  ! 
O  fountained  hill  !  old  Homer's  Helicon  ! 
That  thou  would'st  spout  a  little  streamlet  o'er 
These  sorry  pages  ;  then  the  verse  would  soar 
And  sing  above  this  gentle  pair,  like  lark 
Over  his  nested  young  :  but  all  is  dark 
Around  thine  aged  top,  and  thy  clear  fount 
Exhales  in  mists  to  heaven.     Ay,  the  count 
Of  mighty  Poets  is  made  up  ;  the  scroll 
Is  folded  by  the  Muses  ;   the  bright  roll 


JOHN  KEATS.  29 

Is  in  Apollo's  hand  :  our  dazed  eyes 

Have  seen  a  new  tinge  in  the  western  skies  : 

The  world  has  done  its  duty.     Yet,  oh  yet, 

Although  the  sun  of  poesy  is  set, 

These  lovers  did  embrace,  and  we  must  weep 

That  there  is  no  old  power  left  to  steep 

A  quill  immortal  in  their  joyous  tears." ' 

But  while  Keats  had  thus  to  seek  his  inspira- 
tion in  the  past,  his  relation  to  the  past  itself 
was  inevitably  characterized  by  his  tempera- 
mental limitations  of  interest  and  horizon.  He 
sought  in  it  the  revelation  of  the  beauty  in 
v.'hich  the  present  seemed  to  him  to  be  so  sadly, 
so  grimly  deficient ;  to  any  other  message  borne 
down  to  him  along  the  ages  his  spiritual  ear 
was  closed.  For  the  great  movements  of  men 
in  history  ;  for  the  struggles,  the  experiments, 
and  the  failures ;  for  the  colossal  tragedies  that 
have  been  played  out  upon  the  world's  vast 
stage ;  for  all  the  manifestations  of  ambition 
and  power,  of  courage  and  devotion  to  forlorn 
hopes,  of  faith  unshaken  by  difficulty,  and  pur- 
poses unbent  by  danger,  with  which  the  blood- 
stained annals  of  our  race  are  filled  ; — to  such 
things  his  nature  made  but  little  response. 
Carlyle  denounced  the  age  of  science,  utili- 
tarianism, and  democracy  as  pusillanimous  and 
cowardly,  as  godless  and  insincere ;  and  he 
praised   the   past   for  its  great  men,  its   noble 

'  Endymion,  Book  ii. 


30  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATIOX. 

deeds,  its  heroisms,  its  faith.  Keats  found 
modern  hfe  dull,  sordid,  unpoctic,  ugly,  and  in 
the  record  of  by-gone  days  he  looked  only  for 
the  romantic,  the  picturesque.  Thus  there  is 
but  slight  exaggeration  of  his  position  in  the 
familiar  lines  which  open  the  second  book  of 
Endyniion  : 

"  O  sovereign  power  of  love  !     O  grief  !     O  balm  ! 
All  records,  saving  thine,  come  cool  and  calm 
And  shadowy  through  the  mist  of  passed  years  : 
For  others,  good  or  bad,  hatred  and  tears 
Have  become  indolent  ;  but  touching  thine, 
One  sigh  doth  echo,  one  poor  sob  doth  pine. 
One  kiss  brings  honey-dew  from  buried  days. 
The  woes  of  Troy,  towers  smothering  o'er  their 

blaze, 
Stiff -holden    shields,    far -piercing    spears,    keen 

blades. 
Struggling,  and  blood,  and  shrieks — all  dimly  fades 
Into  some  backward  corner  of  the  brain  ; 
Yet,  in  our  very  souls,  we  feel  amain 
The  close  of  Troilus  and  Cressid  sweet. 
Hence,  pageant  history  !  hence,  gilded  cheat ! 
Swart  planet  in  the  universe  of  deeds  ! 
Wide  sea,  that  one  continuous  murmur  breeds 
Along  the  pebbled  shore  of  memory  ! 
Many  old  rotten-timber'd  boats  there  be 
Upon  thy  vaporous  bosom,  magnified 
To  goodly  vessels  ;  many  a  sail  of  pride. 
And  golden-keel'd,  is  left  unlaunch'd  and  dry. 
But  wherefore  this  ?     What  care,  though  owl  did 

fly 


JOHiV  KEATS.  31 

About  the  great  Athenian  admiral's  mast  ? 
What  care,  though  striding  Alexander  past 
The  Indus  with  his  Macedonian  numbers? 
Though  old  Ulysses  tortur'd  from  his  slumbers 
The  glutted  Cyclops  ?     What  care  ?     Juliet  leaning 
Amid  her  window-flowers,  sighing,  weaning 
Tenderly  her  fancy  from  its  maiden  snow, 
Doth  more  avail  than  these  ;  the  silver  flow 
Of  Hero's  tears,  the  swoon  of  Imogen, 
Fair  Pastorella  in  the  bandit's  den, 
Are  things  to  brood  on  with  more  ardency 
Than  the  death-day  of  empires." 

Little  allowance  has  to  be  made  in  reading 
this  charming  passage  for  the  exaggeration  of 
the  mood  induced  by  the  theme  upon  which 
the  poet  was  then  at  work.  It  would  indeed  be 
fatuous  to  press  over  closely  upon  words  which 
were  never  meant  to  bear  the  strain  of  too  seri- 
ous an  interpretation,  or  to  attempt  to  deduce 
a  solemn  and  definite  criticism  of  life  from  the 
detached  verses  of  a  writer  from  whom  it  is 
vain  to  look  for  systematic  or  carefully  sus- 
tained thought.  There  is  ever  a  danger  lest 
we  should  persist  in  trying  Keats  before  a  mod- 
ern philosophical  tribunal  the  jurisdiction  of 
which  he  himself  would  have  been  the  first  to 
repudiate.  Yet  the  entire  body  of  his  work 
appears  to  justify  us  in  finding  in  the  above- 
cited  lines  an  expression  of  the  feeling  which 
characterised  him  through  life.  And  how,  in 
fact,  should  we  expect  Keats  to  manifest  any 


32  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATIOX. 

interest  in  certain  large  aspects  of  the  life  and 
human  activity  of  the  past  when  it  was  pre- 
cisely the  corresponding  aspects  of  life  and 
human  activity  as  revealed  under  the  form  and 
fashion  of  his  own  age  that  he  persistently 
turned  from  with  unconcealed  dissatisfaction 
and  disgust? 

It  remains  for  us  but  to  touch  in  this  connec- 
tion upon  the  interesting  question  of  Keats's 
instinctive  Platonism — an  illustration  of  that 
"natural  afifinity  "  of  the  poet  "with  the  Greek 
mind  "  *  of  which  we  shall  have  something  more 
to  say  a  little  later  on. 

It  is  at  this  point,  indeed,  that  we  find  Keats's 
hatred  of  the  position  and  rationalistic  temper 
of  modern  thought  perhaps  most  clearly  and 
consistently  formulated.  How  far  the  trans- 
cendental principle,  several  times  distinctly 
enunciated  by  him,  is  to  be  interpreted  as  the 
merely  spontaneous  outcome  and  expression  of 
a  personal,  innate  idiosyncrasy,  or  how  far,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  may  possibly  be  traced  back 
to  the  more  or  less  conscious  absorption  of  ideas 
from  the  atmosphere  he  breathed  and  the  books 
he  fed  upon,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  decide. 
But  there  are  few  issues  of  philosophical  im- 
portance upon  which  he  expressed  himself  with 
such  settled  conviction  as  upon  this  of  the 
supremacy  of    feeling    in    the  quest    of    truth. 

'  R.  C.  Jebb,  The  Growth  and  Influence  of  Classical  Greek 
Poelry,  p.  244. 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  33 

His  distrust  of  intellectual  processes  was  pro- 
found ;  his  faith  in  the  imaginativ^e  faculty — in 
immediate  intuition — unbounded.  It  was  thus 
that  he  reached  the  large  conception  of  things 
revealed  in  the  ever-memorable  lines  which 
close  the  great  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn: 

"  Cold  Pastoral  ! 
When  old  age  shall  this  generation  waste, 

Thou  shalt  remain,  in  midst  of  other  woe 
Than  ours,  a  friend  to  man,  to  whom  thou  say'st, 

'  Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth  Beauty  ' — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

This  does  not  mean — as  is  sometimes  hastily  in- 
ferred— that  Keats  deliberately  placed  beauty 
before  truth,  or  desired  to  sacrifice  the  latter  to 
the  former.  But  it  does  mean  that  he  held  the 
two  to  be  ultimately  and  fundamentally  identi- 
cal, and  that  for  him  the  highest  revelation  of 
truth  was  to  be  sought  under  the  form  of 
beauty.  Nor  is  this  all.  His  Platonism  carries 
him  to  the  further  principle  that  by  holding 
fast  to  the  beautiful  we  possess  the  final  secret 
of  the  true.  His  one  recognized  road  to  reality 
was  thus  the  primrose  path  of  the  imagination. 
"  What  the  Imagination  seizes  as  Beauty  must 
be  Truth,  whether  it  existed  before  or  not  " — 
thus  he  states  his  thesis  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend,  Benjamin  Bailey  ;  adding,  in  striking 
phrase,  that  "  Imagination  may  be  compared  to 


34  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

Adam's  dream — he  awoke  and  found  it  true.*  " 
Here,  as  elsewhere,  he  put  emotional  apprehen- 
sion before  intellectual  verification,  and  made 
intuition,  not  the  logical  faculty,  the  guide  to, 
and  ultimate  criterion,  of  truth.  So  far,  then, 
as  we  are  able  to  establish  anything  like  a  phil- 
osophical basis  for  his  thought,  we  find  Keats 
in  fundamental  antagonism  to  the  traditions  of 
enlightenment  and  the  scientific  spirit  of  his 
time. 


V. 


We  will  now  address  ourselves  to  a  brief  con- 
sideration of  one  of  the  most  important  ques- 
tions confronting  the  student  of  Keats's  work — 
his  general  treatment  of  nature. 

To  dwell  upon  the  large  place  which  nature 
everywhere  occupies  in  his  verse  would  be  su- 
perfluous ;  for  him,  as  the  most  casual  reader  is 
very  soon  made  aware,  "  the  poetry  of  earth  is 
never  dead."  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  exemplify 
or  discuss  at  length  the  faithful  clearness  of  his 
vision  and  the  magical  quality  of  many  of  his 
graphic  touches.  That  fine  felicity  of  turn  and 
phrase,  which  can  be  neither  missed  nor  ex- 
plained, that  genuine  accent  of  the  poetic 
tongue  which  belongs  only  to  those  who  are 
natives  to  the  language,  are  in  particular  to  be 
caught  everywhere  in  his  luxuriant  pictorial  pas- 

'  Forman's  edition  of  Keats,  Vol.  iii.,  pp.  go-gi. 


JOHN  KEATS.  35 

sages  and  in  his  occasional  snatches  of  descrip- 
tion. It  is  true  that  in  weaving  into  his  verse 
the  glory  and  the  loveliness  of  the  external 
world,  he  often  loses  himself  in  mere  opulence 
of  detail — that,  save  in  such  instances  as  the 
Ode  to  Antuinn  and  Hyperion,  his  transcripts 
habitually  lack  that  true  sense  of  proportion 
and  perspective,  that  firm  subjection  of  minutiae 
to  general  effect,  in  a  word,  that  power  of  com- 
position which  mark  the  best  workmanship  of 
Wordsworth  and  Tennyson.  But  in  the  mar- 
vellous fifth  stanza  of  the  Ode  to  a  Nightingale, 
in  the  splendid  opening  of  Hyperion,  and  in 
such  memorable  phrases  as 

"  I  who  still  saw  the  horizontal  sun 

Heave  his  broad  shoulder  o'er  the  edge  o'  the 
world  "  '  ; 

and 

"  The  good-night  blush  of  Eve  was  waning  slow  "  ^  ; 

and 

"  Like  rose  leaves  with  the  drip  of  summer  rains  "  ' ; 

and 

"  Like  new  flowers  at  morning  song  of  bees  "  *  ; 

'  Endymion,  Book  i. 

^  Ibid.,  Book  iv. 

^  Sonnet :  "  After  dark  vapors  have  oppress'd  our  plains." 

''  Lamia,  Book  ii. 


36  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

to  pick  only  a  few  from  the  countless  lines  that 
linger  in  the  memory,  wc  feel  that  in  the 
natural  magic  of  description  Keats  at  his  best 
is  worthy  to  take  a  place  beside  Shakespeare 
himself. 

But  when  from  the  observation  of  these 
manifest  facts,  and  from  the  perusal  of  some  of 
those  ever  fresh  and  charming  transcripts  from 
nature  Avhich  are  so  freely  scattered  about  his 
pages,  we  pass  on  to  inquire  a  little  more  par- 
ticularly into  the  spiritual  characteristics  re- 
vealed by  them,  we  find  the  poet  marked  by 
the  power  and  the  limitations  already  noticed, 
— we  find,  in  other  words,  that,  as  might  have 
been  anticipated,  his  attitude  towards  the  out- 
ward world  harmonizes  completely  with  his 
general  attitude  towards  life. 

It  should  be  remarked  incidentally  that  Keats 
had  a  Greek  fondness  for  conceiving  the  forces 
of  nature  under  human  forms  of  transcendant 
loveliness.  The  world  of  his  imagination  was 
peopled  with  the  bright  figures  of  nymphs  and 
fauns,  dryads  and  hamadryads  ;  and  the  use 
which  he  makes  of  these  differs  entirely  from 
the  dry  and  conventional  uses  to  which  they 
had  been  put  by  writers  of  the  so-called  pseudo- 
classic  school:  They  are  so  real  and  living  to 
him  that  they  do  not  for  a  moment  remind  us 
of  the  "  supernatural  machinery"  about  which, 
in  discussing  the  epic,  Bossu  and  Boilcau,  Dry- 
den  and  Addison  and  Pope  had  found  so  much 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  37 

to  say.  It  should,  moreover,  be  borne  in  mind 
that  Keats  was  perhaps  the  first  of  our  EngHsh 
poets  to  follow — it  must  be  assumed  uncon- 
sciously— the  lead  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  in 
connecting,  after  the  manner  of  the  Greeks 
themselves,  the  figures  of  classic  mythology 
directly  with  nature  and  its  activities,  in  lieu  of 
relating  them  narrowly  to  man,  as  was  the  uni- 
versal habit  of  poets  from  the  renaissance  down- 
ward.' If  we  had  no  other  evidence  before  us 
beyond  that  furnished  by  the  Ode  to  Pan  in  the 
first  book  of  Endyniion  {ih.Q  "pretty  piece  of 
paganism  "  which  Wordsworth  damned  with 
faint  praise),  we  should  still  be  able  to  realize 
something  of  that  wonderful  power  of  spon- 
taneous sympathy  with  Hellenic  ways  of  look- 
ing at  things  which  remains,  when  all  is  said,  one 
of  the  most  marvellous  characteristics  of  Keats's 
genius. 

But  it  is  with  his  more  direct  relation  to 
nature  that  we  are  now  particularly  concerned  ; 
and  here,  once  again,  we  observe  immediately 
the  poet's  characteristically  objective  spirit  and 
the  absence  in  his  work  of  the  peculiarly  modern 
note.  He  revels  with  the  keenest  sensuous  en- 
joyment in  all  the  beauties  of  natural  sights  and 
sounds ;  he  luxuriates  in  the  multifarious  de- 
lights of  field  and  forest,  cloud  and  stream  ;  he 
stands  breathless  in  the  presence  of  the  great 
silent   mountains  ;  his  whole  temperament  re- 

'  Kingsley,  Essay  on  Alexander  Smith  and  Alexander  Pope.    \/ 


38  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

sponds  to  the  "  eternal  whispers  "  of  the  sea. 
But  of  any  conception  of  a  spiritual  relation  with 
nature  —  of  any  Wordsworthian  or  Shelleyan 
feeling  of  a  deep  and  intimate  union  between 
the  soul  of  man  and  the  soul  immanent  in  the 
external  universe — of  anything  of  this  kind, 
Keats's  poetry  shows  hardly  a  trace.  In  the 
material  beauty  of  the  world — in  the  appeal 
which  the  bright  show  of  things  made  to  his 
highly  strung  and  finely  developed  senses — he 
found  both  his  sphere  and  his  limitation.  Na- 
ture for  him  had  no  spiritual  message,  no  ethical 
meaning.  lie  loved  her  with  a  passionate,  all- 
absorbing  love  ;  but  she  was  to  him  a  beautiful 
soulless  mistress,  and  not  the  solemn,  veiled 
prophetess  before  whom  Wordsworth  offered 
up  his  vows,  nor  the  great  mysterious  mother 
of  Shelley's  rapt  and  gorgeous  visions. 

No  student  of  Wordsworth  needs  to  be  re- 
minded of  the  sundry  passages  of  deep  autobio- 
graphical value  in  which  that  poet  describes  the 
changes  which  came  over  his  relations  with 
nature  as  his  knowledge  of  life  deepened  and  the 
"  mellower  years  "  gradually  brought  him  "  a 
riper  mind."  In  the  Lines  Composed  a  Feiv  Miles 
Above  Tintern  Abbey,  and  again  with  more  de- 
tail in  the  first  and  second  books  of  TJie  Prelude, 
he  sets  forth  the  three  principal  stages  in  the 
growth  of  his  love  for  nature.  First  came  the 
boyish  stage  of  coarse  animal  pleasure,  with  its 
glad  movements  of  physical  vitality,  its  tingling 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  39 

delight  in  the  various  elements  which  minis- 
tered to  its  simple,  unsophisticated  life.  This 
phase  of  inner  experience  little  by  little  gave 
way  to  a  growing  sense  of  the  manifold  beauty 
of  form  and  color  revealed  to  the  attentive  eve 
by  the  rich  external  world.  Then,  indeed,  he 
could  declare,  nature  was  to  him  "  all  in  all." 
Daily  "  the  common  range  of  visible  things  " 
grew  more  and  more  dear  to  him,  but  the  early 
charm  of  incidental  association  weakened,  and 
nature  itself 

"  intervenient  till  this  time 
And  secondary,  now  at  length  was  sought 
For  her  own  sake," 

Yet  even  this  stage  proved  to  be  one  simply  of 
transition.  He  came  presently,  he  tells  us,  in 
words  too  familiar  to  need  lengthy  quotation, 

"  To  look  on  Nature,  not  as  in  the  hour 
Of  thoughtless  youth  ;  but  hearing  oftentimes 
The  still  sad  music  of  humanity, 
Nor  harsh  nor  greeting,  though  of  ample  power 
To  chasten  and  subdue." 

In  these  later  days  of  calm  peacefulness  and 
meditation,  he  remained  consistent  in  his  devo- 
tion to  "  the  meadows  and  the  woods  and 
mountains,"  but  the  character  of  his  feeling 
had  been  modified.  It  had  ripened  into  the 
closest  and  most  intimate  love — a  love  which. 


40  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

as  he  himself  tells  us,  was  profoundly  religious 
in  its  quality.  And  at  this  time  he  came  to 
realize  how  much  his  mature  mind  had  itself 
brought  to  nature,  and  felt  well  pleased  to 
recognize  in  her  and  in  the  language  of  his 
senses,  as  they  responded  to  her  noble  and 
benign  influence, 

"  The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 
The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart,  and  soul 
Of  all  my  moral  being." 

Now,  for  the  critic  of  Keats  there  is  particu- 
lar interest  in  the  passages  in  which  Words- 
worth expounds  the  characteristics  of  the  second 
stage  of  his  spiritual  unfolding,  above  touched 
on.  Take  the  following  lines  from  his  Tititern 
A  bbey  : 

"  I  cannot  paint 
What  then  I  was.     The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion  :  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite  ;  a  feeling  and  a  love 
That  had  no  need  of  a  rtnwter  charm 
By  thought  supplied,  nor  any  interest 
Unborrow" d from  the  eye  "  : 

and  it  is  obvious  that  the  language  employed, 
and  especially  the  phrases  which  we  have  itali- 
cized, are  throughout  applicable  to  Keats.     At 


JOHN  KEATS.  4 1 

the  same  time  we  may  more  clearly  define  the 
attitude  and  feeling  of  our  own  poet  by  con- 
trasting any  one  or  more  of  the  countless  pas- 
sages in  which  Wordsworth  analyzes  and  dwells 
upon  his  final  temper  and  outlook.  The  clos- 
ing verses  of  his  ode  on  The  Intimations  of 
Imuiortality  may  be  here  chosen  by  way  of  a 
single  illustration : 

"  The  clouds  that  gather  round  the  setting  sun 
Do  take  a  sober  colouring  from  an  eye 
That  hath  kept  watch  o'er  man's  mortality  ; 
Another  race  hath  been,  and  other  palms  are  won. 
Thanks  to  the  human  heart  by  which  we  live, 
Thanks  to  its  tenderness,  its  joys,  and  fears, 
To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 

Would  Keats,  had  he  lived,  have  presently 
passed  out  of  the  secondary  stage  described  by 
Wordsworth,  into  one  in  which  for  him,  too, 
the  glorious  show  of  things  might  have  been 
fraught  with  an  infinite  spiritual  significance? 
in  which,  to  "  the  ear  of  faith  "  the  universe 
might  have  yielded  "  authentic  tidings  "  of  the 
"  central  peace,  subsisting  at  the  heart  of  end- 
less agitation "  ? '  in  which  the  feeling  with 
which  he  "  walked  with  nature,"  might  have 
come  to  partake  of  the  character  of  "  religious 
love"?'     This  is  an  interesting  and  important 

*   The  Excursion,  Book  iv. 
^  The  Prelude,  Book  ii. 


42  STUDIES  IiV  INTERPRETATION. 

question,  but  wc  shall  find  it  most  convenient 
to  leave  it  until,  in  connection  with  a  larger 
problem,  it  comes  up  for  discussion  in  another 
part  of  our  study. 

It  remains  but  to  point  out  that  the  large 
body  of  Keats's  nature-poetry  is  highly  inter- 
esting in  yet  another  way.  It  shows  but  little 
tendency  towards  that  modern  subjectivity  of 
treatment  which,  since  Mr.  Ruskin's  famous 
criticism,  we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  calling, 
not  very  happily  it  is  to  be  feared,  the  "  pa- 
thetic fallacy."  '  Mr.  Ruskin,  here  as  so  often 
elsewhere,  pushed  his  theory  to  quite  unjusti- 
fiable extremes,  and  though  much  of  his  discus- 
sion is  remarkably  luminous  and  suggestive, 
'much,  on  the  other  hand,  is  radically  specious 
and  confused.  None  the  less  we  are  thank- 
ful to  him  for  emphasizing  the  difference 
"  between  the  ordinary,  proper,  and  true  ap- 
pearances of  things  to  us,  and  their  extraordin- 
ary, or  false  appearances,  when  we  are  under 
the  influence  of  emotion,  or  contemplative 
fancy."  That  "  all  violent  feelings  "  tend  "  to 
produce  in  us  a  falseness  in  all  our  impressions 
of  external  things,"  is  of  course  unquestionable ; 
and  that  this  disturbance  of  vision — this  con- 
stant imputation  of  personal  mood  to  natural 
phenomena,  is  furthermore  not  only  a  salient 
characteristic  of  the  mass  of  our  modern  poetry, 
but  is  also  to  be  considered  as  a  direct  result  of 

*  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  iii.,  Chap.  xii. 


JOHN  KEATS.  43 

certain  of  the  sophisticating  mental  habits  of 
our  time,  is  hardly  less  obvious.'  Now  the 
point  here  to  be  noticed  is  that  of  this  species 
of  "  pathetic  fallacy,"  in  its  more  morbid  de- 
velopments, the  poetry  of  Keats  as  a  whole  is 
singularly  free. 

In  poetic  analogy  Keats  of  course  indulges 
freely,  connecting  natural  phenomena  not  only 
with  one  another  but  also  with  human  feelings 

o 

'  Mr.  Alfred  Austin  gives  an  admirable  account  of  this  sub- 
jective interpretation  of  nature  in  his  Fortunat::s  the  Pessimist 
(Act  I,  Scene  iii.) : 

"  The  unmeditative  primrose  asks  not  why 
It  blooms  then  fades,  nor  doth  the  bluebell  feel 
The  pathos  of  its  passing  ;  but  man  comes, 
And  with  unquiet  questioning  infects 
The  woodland  with  its  woe.     The  impulsive  note 
Sung  by  yon  cuckoo  conscienceless,  when  heard 
By  human  ear,  sounds  like  melodious  guilt, 
The  mocking  Mephistopheles  of  Love. 
The  nightingale  that  bubbleth  'mong  the  leaves 
With  such  sweet  insolicitude  it  asks 
No  dullard  night  to  sleep  away  its  song, 
Misread  by  melancholy  man,  bewails 
A  woe  it  understands  not,  thoughtless  bird. 
Thus  staid  reflection's  shadow  falls  athwart 
The  cheerful  seeming  of  the  spring,  and  makes 
May  sadder  than  December." 

Compare  Mr.  William  Watson's  Changed  Voices  and  his  epi- 
gram beginning  "  For  metaphors  of  man  we  search  the  skies." 
The  fine  stanza  in  Coleridge's  Ode  to  Dejection  is  too  familiar 
to  need  more  than  passing  reference.  An  interesting  discus- 
sion of  the  whole  question  of  the  "  pathetic  fallacy"  is  given 
by  Mr.  Roden  Noel  in  his  essay  on  "  The  Poetic  Interpreta- 
tion of  Nature  "  ( IVordsworthiana,  ed.  by  William  Knight). 


44  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

and  experiences.  The  evening-star  becomes  for 
him  an  "  amorous  glow-worm  of  the  sky  "  ; ' 
sweet  peas  stand  "  on  tiptoe  for  a  flight  "  ;"  the 
curve  of  a  river  suggests  the  "  crescent  moon  "  ; ' 
— and  so  on  ;  and  the  illustrations  might  be 
indefinitely  multiplied.  So,  too,  with  the  other 
kind  of  analogy.  The  slow  backward  move- 
ment of  a  spent  wave  is  described  by  him, 
through  his  own  sense  of  lethargy,  as  "  way- 
ward indolence  "  ;  ^  tall  oaks  "  dream  all  night 
without  a  stir  "  ; '  the  autumn  sun  is  seen  by 
him  "  smiling  at  eve  upon  the  quiet  sheaves  "  ;  * 
while  "  the  moving  waters  "  of  the  ocean  have 
"  their  priest-like  task  of  pure  ablution  "  '  to 
perform.  But  there  is  manifestly  a  funda- 
mental distinction  between  this  imaginative 
striking  out  of  suggestive  correspondences, 
this  subtle  fusion  of  phenomenon  and  phe- 
nomenon, and  such  a  saturation  of  nature  with 
human  feeling  as  results  in  the  more  or  less  com- 
plete distortion  of  the  thing  seen  by  the  emo- 
tional medium  through  which  it  is  observed. 
In  the  phrases  just  quoted,  the  poet's  eye  is 
clear  and  steady,  and  his  touch  certain  and  firm, 
though  his  imaginative  insight  enables  him  to 

'  Ode  to  Psyche. 

^  "  I  stood  tiptoe  upon  a  little  hill." 

'  Endymion,  Book  i. 

'^  Ibid.,  ii. 

*  Hyperion,  Book  i. 

*  Sonnet  :   "  After  dark  vapours." 

'  Ibid.,   "  Bright  star,  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art." 


JOHN  KEATS.  45 

discern  symbols  and  analogies  which  to  ordi- 
nary vision  remain  unrevealed.  But  the  case  is 
entirely  altered  when,  in  a  highly  self-involved 
mood,  we  concern  ourselves  primarily  not  with 
nature,  but  with  ourselves,  and  when,  having 
our  eyes  less  upon  the  object  than  upon  our 
own  state,  we  become  powerless  to  describe  the 
simplest  fact  or  scene  without  the  imputation 
of  purely  personal  coloring.  It  is  open  to  us 
if  we  will  to  follow  Keats  so  far  as  to  assert,  as 
he  appears  to  do  in  a  remarkable  passage  in  the 
first  book  of  Eiidymion,''  that  all  natural  beauty 
runs  its  roots  far  down  into  the  rich  sub-soil  of 
human  experience.  Yet  we  are  still  bound  to 
realize  that  to  treat  nature  as  the  vital  and  im-" 
mediate  source  of  feelings  which  we  ourselves 
have  thrust  upon  her  out  of  our  own  lives,  is  a 
practice  to  be  held  as  morbid  in  origin,  no  mat- 
ter how  striking  and  dramatically  effective  it 
may  sometimes  be  in  its  results. 

Now  it  is  to  be  noted,  as  we  have  said,  that 
of  this  characteristic  modern  tendency,  the 
poetry  of  Keats  shows  very  little  trace.  His 
habit  was  to  describe  things  as  he  saw  them, 
without  seeking  to  read  into  them  the  joys  and 
sorrows  of  the  human  lot.  His  treatment  of 
nature  is  therefore  marked,  to  use  Mr.  Ruskin's 

'  See  towards  the  close  of  the  book,  the  lines — "  Just  so  may- 
love,"  etc.  An  interesting  side-light  is  thrown  on  the  general 
question  of  the  anthropomorphic  basis  for  what  we  call  natural 
beauty,  by  Mr.  Lafcadio  Uearn's  chapter  "Of  the  Eternal 
Feminine  "  in  his  Out  of  the  East. 


46  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

phrase,  by  an  "  exquisite  sincerity,"  which  is 
doubly  significant  in  a  young  modern  writer  as 
being,  like  the  characteristics  already  specified, 
at  once  unmodern  and  unyouthful.  Fresh  and 
unsophisticated  by  temperamental  endowment, 
he  could  take  the  outward  world  simply  and 
frankly,  as  it  stood  revealed  to  him  through  the 
senses,  and  his  strong  artistic  craving  found 
ample  satisfaction  in  its  ever-renewed  beauty, 
its  ever-living  charm.  He  desired  from  it  no 
spiritual  revelation,  no  ethical  message  ;  neither 
did  he  attempt  to  force  it  to  become  tiie  plas- 
tic recipient  and  mouthpiece  of  his  individual 
moods  and  fancies. 

The  most  striking  illustration  of  Keats's  atti- 
tude towards  nature,  and  one  moreover  of 
crucial  importance,  will  be  found  in  his  treat- 
ment of  autumn.  So  familiar  have  we  all  be- 
come with  the  mood  of  gentle  brooding  melan- 
choly habitually  associated  with  this  season  of 
the  year — with  the  pensiveness  that  steeps  all 
thought  and  feeling  in  a  twilight  beauty  of  its 
own,  as  the  sight  of  rcddenmg  leaf,  and  patter- 
ing chestnut,  and  mellowing  field  brings  to  us 
the  poignant  suggestion  of  the  evanescence  of 
all  earthly  loveliness, — that  we  seldom  pause  to 
remind  ourselves  that  the  sadness  of  an  October 
morning  is  fundamentally  due  to  the  projection 
into  nature  of  an  element  directly  derived  from 
human  experience.  The  changes  of  the  later 
year  belong,  like  the  changes  of  the  earlier,  to 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  47 

the  regular  cycle  of  the  seasons;  and  if  the 
bursting  blossoms  of  May  thrill  us  with  a  new 
and  subtle  joy,  while  the  leafless  trees  of  Octo- 
ber, standing  gaunt  and  spectral  against  the 
dull-red  sunset  sky,  breathe  into  our  spirits  an 
insidious  melancholy,  a  sense  of  the  passing  of 
love  and  hope,  an  evasive  suggestion  of  sorrow 
so  delicate  as  to  be  nearly  akin  to  joy,-- -it  is 
mainly  because  we  look  at  these  natural  mani- 
festations of  the  cosmic  processes  everywhere 
at  work  around  us  through  the  medium  of 
human  feeling,  pervading  them  with  a  rich  ex- 
pansive meaning  that  in  reality  appertains  to 
our  own  lives.  Take  the  superb  lines  from  the 
song  in  The  Princess  : 

"  Tears,  idle  tears,  I  know  not  what  they  mean, 
Tears  from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair, 
Rise  in  the  heart  and  gather  to  the  eyes 
In  looking  on  the  happy  autumn  fields. 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more  " — 

or  take  again,  from  the  works  of  the  same  great 
master,  the  flawlessly  perfect  vignette  in  In 
Mcnwriam — the  stanza  beginning — ' 

"  Calm  is  the  morn  without  a  sound, 
Calm  as  to  suit  a  calmer  grief  :  " 

and  we  have  autumn  treated  in  the  characteris- 
tically modern,  and  therefore  to  most  of  us,  the 
sympathic  way.     Or  choose,  for  its  close  paral- 

'§xi. 


48  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

lelism  to  Kcats's  own  ode,  the  finely-sustained 
Autiunii  of  Mr.  William  Watson,  and  once  more 
we  find  the  poet  studying  the  landscape  and  its 
details  through  a  disturbing  haze  of  sentiment 
arisinsf  from  the  heated  or  morbid  condition  of 
his  own  mind  :  ■ 

"  Thou  burden  of  all  songs  the  earth  hath  sung. 
Thou  retrospect  in  Time's  reverted  eyes, 
Thou  metai)hor  of  everything  that  dies, 
That  dies  ill-starred,  or  dies  beloved  and  young 

And  therefore  blest  and  wise, — 
O,  be  less  beautiful,  or  be  less  brief, 
Thou  tragic  f;plendour,  strange  and  full  of  fear  ! 
In  vain  her  pageant  shall  the  summer  rear? 
At  thy  mute  signal,  leaf  by  golden  leaf, 

Crumbles  the  gorgeous  year. 


"  For  me,  to  dreams  resign'd,  there  come  and  go, 
'Twixt  mountains   draped  and  hooded   night  and 

morn. 
Elusive  notes  in  wandering  wafture  borne. 
From  undiscoverable  lips  that  blow 

An  immaterial  horn  ; 
And  spectral  seem  thy  winter-boding  trees, 
Their  ruinous  bowers  and  drifted  foliage  wet — 
O  Past  and  Future  in  sad  bridal  met, 
O  voice  of  everything  that  perishes. 

And  soul  of  all  regret." 

These  splendid  verses  are  from  first  to  last 
entirely    subjective ;    they    quiver    with    scnti- 


JOfIN  KEATS.  49 

ment ;  they  are  fashioned  from  the  stuff  of 
human  experience  ;  the  poet's  eye  is  really 
more  upon  himself  than  upon  the  things  of  the 
outer  world.  Contrast,  now,  the  interpretation 
of  nature  through  the  writer's  mood,  exempli- 
fied in  the  above  passages,  with  the  almost 
absolute  aloofness  of  such  stanzas  as  these  : 

"  Season  of  mists  and  mellow  fruitfulness, 
Close  bosom  friend  of  the  maturing  sun  ; 
Conspiring  with  him  how  to  load  and  bless 
With  fruit  the  vines  that  round  the  thatch-eaves 

run  ; 
To  bend  with  apples  the  moss'd  cottage  trees, 
And  fdl  all  fruit  with  ripeness  to  the  core  ; 
To  swell  the  gourd,  and  plump  the  hazel  shells 
With  a  sweet  kernel ;  to  set  budding  more 
And  still  more,  later  flowers  for  the  bees, 
Until  they  think  warm  days  will  never  cease. 
For  summer  has  o'erbrimm'd  their  clammy  cells. 


Where  are  the  songs  of  spring  ?     Ay,  where  are 

they  ? 
Think  not  of  them,  thou  hast  thy  music  too— 
While  barred  clouds  bloom  the  soft-dying  day. 
And  touch  the  stubble  plains  with  rosy  hue  ; 
Then  in  a  wailful  choir  the  small  gnats  mourn 
Among  the  river  sallows,  borne  aloft 
Or  sinking  as  the  light  wind  lives  or  dies  ; 
And  full-grown  lambs  loud  bleat  from  hilly  bourn  ; 
Hedge-crickets  sing  ;  and  now  with  treble  soft 


50  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

The  red-breast  whistles  from  a  garden-croft  ; 
And  gathering  swallows  twitter  in  the  skies." 

In  these  admirable  lines  there  is  but  a  single 
fallacious  touch,  and  that  of  the  most  super- 
ficial kind — "  Then  in  a  wailful  choir  the  small 
gnats  mourn."  Otherwise  the  description  is 
perfect  in  its  sheer  objectivity.  The  following 
sentences  from  Keats's  letter  to  Reynolds  of 
the  22d  September,  1819,  should  be  read  care- 
fully in  connection  with  it : 

"  How  beautiful  the  season  is  now.  How 
fine  the  air — a  temperate  sharpness  about  it. 
Really,  without  joking,  chaste  weather — Dian 
skies.  I  never  liked  stubble-fields  so  much  as 
now — aye,  better  than  the  chilly  green  of  the 
spring.  Somehow,  a  stubble-plain  looks  warm, 
in  the  same  way  that  some  pictures  look  warm. 
This  struck  me  so  much  in  my  Sunday's  walk 
that  I  composed  it."  ' 

Place  this  passage  alongside  of  the  ode  itself, 
to  which  it  furnishes  an  admirable  introduction, 
and  the  simple,  direct,  unsophisticated  sensu- 
ousness,  the  characteristic  naivete  of  Keats's 
whole  relation  to  nature,  is  made  very  clear.^ 

'  Forman's  edition  of   Keats's  Works,  Vol.  iii.,  p.  329. 

"^  Of  another  kind  of  fallacy  in  the  handling  of  nature,  how- 
ever, the  Ode  I0  a  Nightingale  furnishes  a  rather  striking 
example.  A  common  and  effective  motif  in  poetry  is  tliat  of 
contrasting  the  continuity  of  existence  of  what  we  call  nature 
with  the  ephemeral  life  of  the  individual  man.  Ordinarily  tlie 
sharp  contrast  liius  instituted  is  between  the  cosmic  totality  of 


JOHN  KEATS.  5  I 

VI. 

We  will  now  endeavor  to  bring  these  various 
aspects  of  Keats's  genius  into  vital  relation  with 
one  another  by  tracing  them  to  their  common 
source  in  the  poet's  peculiar  temperament,  as 
it  is  revealed  to  us  throughout  his  verse,  and 
even  more  strikingly,  or  at  any  rate  more  posi- 
tively, in  many  of  his  letters. 

Every  student  of  German  literature  is  famil- 
iar with  Heinrich  Heine's  famous  antithesis  of 
the  Hebrew  and  the  Hellene.  Thrown  out  orig- 
inally for  polemical  purposes,'  his  theory  was, 

things  around  us — Nature  the  vast  and  undying — and  the  tiny 
span  of  our  personal  career  ;  but  in  the  ode  in  question  the 
separate  man  is  set  over  against  the  ^c'^if;'^/ bird.  The  implied 
fallacy  is  of  course  the  same  in  either  case.  Perhaps  it  would 
be  fair  to  ask  whether  a  similar  sentiment  would  not  dominate 
the  poetry  of  the  rose,  supposing  the  short-lived  individual 
flower  could  only  put  on  record  its  feelings  as  it  looked  out  on 
the  continuous  cycle  of  corporate  human  life — on  Man  the 
vast  and  undying.  It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that 
this  species  of  fallacy  is  very  far  indeed  from  being  the  pro- 
duct of  modern  conditions  of  life  and  thought.  It  is  to  be 
found  imbedded  in  much  of  the  most  primitive  literatures, 
while  perhaps  the  purest  expressions  ever  given  to  it  are  those 
well-known  to  readers  of  the  later  classic  poets,  Theocritus, 
Bion,  Moschus,  Catullus.  Instance  the  beautiful  lines  of  the 
last-named  writer — 

"  Soles  occidere  et  redire  possunt, 
Nobis  quum  simul  occidit  brevis  lux 
Nox  est  perpetua  una  dormienda." 

^  In  his  Ludwig  Borne,  1840.  An  anticipation  of  this  prin- 
ciple of  division  may  be  found  in  Schiller's  suggestive  essay 
Ueber  naive  unci  setrtimentalische  Dichtiing,  1795-96. 


> 


52  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

that  mankind  as  a  mass  is  divisible  into  two 
large  categories — those  in  whom  the  moral  and 
spiritual  nature  is  in  the  ascendant,  and  those 
in  whom  the  aesthetic  or  artistic  nature  is  in 
the  ascendant.  In  the  one  group  we  have  men 
"of  ascetic  temperaments,  hostile  to  art,  and 
seeking  only  spiritual  development " ;  in  the 
other  group,  "  men  filled  with  the  warmth  of 
life,  loving  display,  and  realistic  in  character." 
The  fundamental  antagonism  here  presented, 
therefore,  is  between  the  ascetic  and  spiritual 
nature,  which  Heine  calls  Jewish,  Christian,  or 
preferably  Nazarene  ;  and  the  sensuous  or  artis- 
tic nature  which  he  defines  as  Hellenic,  Greek, 
or  Pagan.  The  keynote  of  the  one  is  spiritu- 
ality, and  its  ideal  religious  culture ;  the  key- 
note of  the  other  is  beauty,  and  its  ideal 
aesthetic  culture. 

Pressed  upon  closely,  the  distinction  here 
presented,  like  all  such  distinctions,  would 
readily  lend  itself  to  abuse.  It  can  never  be 
too  often  or  too  strongly  repeated  that  life  is 
altogether  too  rich  and  large  and  Protean  a 
thing  to  be  packed  away  snugly  into  the  cast- 
iron  terms  of  any  doctrinaire  formula  whatso- 
ever. Particularly,  of  course,  in  the  midst  of  a 
civilization  so  complex  in  its  sources,  and  so 
eclectic  in  its  character,  as  our  own,  must  there 
be  danger  in  the  random  employment  of 
phrases  pointing  back  to  periods  of  culture 
which,  after   all,   have   been   permanently   out- 


JOHN  KEATS.  53 

grown.  It  is  well  enough  to  indicate  a  man's 
spiritual  affinities  by  such  words  as^gothic," 
"  classic,"  "  puritan,"  and  the  like  ;  and  by  the 
discriminating  use  of  such  epithets  we  may 
often  touch  upon  large  and  important  truths. 
Yet  we  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that 
the  definitions  thus  offered  can,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  be  nothing  more  than  approximate. 
The  narrowest  and  most  one-sided  product  of 
modern  conditions  is  none  the  less  a  citizen  of 
his  century,  and  cannot  altogether  denaturalize 
himself ;  his  bias  may  be  strong,  yet  the  forces 
of  his  being  will  of  necessity  be  modified  and 
partially  transformed  by  the  multitudinous  in- 
fluences that  play  about  his  daily  life.  Thus 
in  no  precise  sense  can  any  man  be  described 
as  going  back  to  the  point  of  view  of  a  past 
century.  Despite  proclivity  and  association, 
character  and  discipline,  by  countless  subtle 
and  often  unrecognized  threads  of  thought  and 
feeling  the  age  in  which  he  lives  will  hold  him 
firmly  as  its  own. 

Nevertheless,  handled  with  proper  caution, 
and  accepted  as  having  reference  only  to  broad 
and  general  characteristics,  Heine's  formula 
may  be  found  at  least  suggestive.  There  are 
men  whose  lives  are  wholly  dominated  by  the 
idea  of  morality  ;  for  whom  existence  is  earn- 
est, strenuous,  severe — a  field  of  ceaseless  con- 
flict and  tireless  exertion;  who  care  little  or. 
nothing    for   beauty,    as    such ;    who    look    at 


54  STUDIES  nv  INTERPRErATIOiY. 

humanity  and  its  problems  from  the  religious 
and  etliical  side.  Sucli  men  we  may  not  un- 
fairly describe  as  Hebrews  or  Nazarenes.  Just 
so,  at  the  opposite  pole  of  temperament  and 
character,  there  are  others  in  whom  the  master- 
passion  is  the  passion  for  beauty  ;  by  whom  the 
world  is  valued  only  by  reason  of  its  loveliness; 
to  whom  the  moral  problems  of  the  individual 
and  the  race  make  no  appeal ;  whose  stand- 
point throughout  is  the  aesthetic  standpoint. 
For  such  men  the  word  pagan,  discharged,  of 
course,  of  any  reproachful  connotation,  is  no 
unfitting  designation.  Between  these  two  ex- 
tremes no  real  sympathy  is  possible.  The 
Nazarene  must  needs  regard  the  pagan  as  sen- 
suous, superficial,  deficient  in  moral  earnest- 
ness ;  to  the  pagan,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Nazarene  will  not  fail  to  appear  narrow,  big- 
oted, gloomy,  ascetic.  And  just  as  of  the  one 
class  we  have  a  powerful  representative  in 
Thomas  Carlyle,  a  true  giant  of  the  old  fervent 
prophetic  race,  so  of  the  other  class  we  could 
hardly  find  a  more  interesting  example  than 
our  own  poet,  John  Keats. 

We  have  already  guarded  ourselves  in  a  gen- 
eral way  against  the  misinterpretation  of  such 
a  statement.  Two  points  of  a  more  special 
character  must  now  be  insisted  on.  In  the 
first  place,  we  chose  the  word  "  pagan,"  instead 
of  the  partially  synonymous  words  "  Hellenic" 
and  "  Greek,"  in  order  that  we  may  hold  clearly 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  55 

in  view  the  fact  that  we  are  deahng  with  tem- 
perament and  mental  outlook,  and  not  with 
any  questions  connected  with  form  and  style. 
With  an  intuitive  rapidity  and  certainty  which, 
considering  the  limitations  and  disadvantages 
of  his  education,  fall  little  short  of  divination, 
Keats  assimilated  the  simple  sensuousness,  the 
frank,  spontaneous  joyousness,  the  devotion  to 
beauty,  the  intimate  good-fellowship  with  na- 
ture, which  we  have  in  mind  when  we  speak  of 
the  pagan  spirit  ;  the  restraint,  temperance, 
self-repression,  and  austerity  which  character- 
ized Hellenic  art — the  qualities  which  we  em- 
phatically call  classic — he,  on  the  other  hand, 
never  learned  to  know.  The  difference  in  this 
respect  between  his  own  work  and  the  work  of 
such  thoroughly  disciplined  classicists  as  Lan- 
dor  and  Arnold,  is  sufficiently  marked.  How 
curiously  un-Greek,  how  curiously  Gothic,  is 
such  a  sentence  as  this  from  one  of  his  letters 
to  Reynolds : 

"  If  you  understand  Greek,  and  would  read 
me  passages  now  and  then,  explaining  their 
meaning, 't  would  be,  from  its  mistiness,  per- 
haps a  greater  luxury  than  reading  the  thing 
itself."' 

"  From  its  mistiness  "  ! — what  a  strange  touch 

in  such  a  connection  !     Keats's  style  is,  indeed, 

as  un-Hellenic  as  possible — it  is  ultra-romantic. 

In  his  love  of  imaginative  detail — in  his  florid 

'  27  April,  1S18  (Forman's  edition  of  Kcats^  Vol.  iii.,  p.  146). 


56  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

luxuriance,  excess,  extravagance,  and  occasional 
faults  against  proportion  and  good  taste — in 
his  persistent  tendency  not  to  outline  only, 
but  to  paint  in,  to  follow  every  thought,  and 
pursue  "  conception  to  the  very  bourn  of 
Heaven"; — in  all  these  familiar  characteristics 
he  testifies  to  the  direct  influence  of  his  tech- 
nical models,  the  Elizabethans,  and  particularly 
of  Spenser.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  he 
absorbed  Homer  through  the  version  of  Chap- 
man, and  that  thus  his  knowledge  of  Greek 
poetry,  always  second-hand  knowledge,  was  col- 
ored deeply  by  the  same  formal  medium. 

In  the  second  place,  as  it  is  almost  needless 
to  say,  Keats's  paganism  was  spontaneous  and 
temperamental,  and  not  at  all  of  the  reasoned 
or  philosophic  order.  It  was  never  worked  out 
by  him  into,  and  certainly  should  not  be  re- 
garded by  us  as,  a  methodized  interpretation 
of  life.  His  poetry  lacks  the  deep  Hellenic 
fervor,  the  wellnigh  spiritual  rapture  and  glow 
of  some  of  the  work  of  Swinburne,  whose  na- 
ture has  always  been  keenly  responsive  to 
"  the  fair  humanities  of  old  religion,"  and  for 
whom,  as  for  the  true  Greek,  earth  and  sea  are 
still  the  "  great  sweet  mothers  of  man."  The 
accent  of  Hcrtha,  Thalassius,  The  Garden  of 
Proserpine,  is  to  be  caught  seldom  indeed  in 
Keats's  verse.  Nor  is  this  all.  His  paganism 
is  not  only  non-philosophic  and  non-religious; 
it  is  also  throughout  of  the  non-militant  char- 


JOHN  KEATS.  57 

acter.  His  poetry  has  been  described  as  "  a 
wail  and  a  remonstrance "  over  the  passing 
away  of  the  beautiful  mythology  which  he 
loved  so  well ;  but,  though  we  may  detect 
something  of  the  wail  in  it,  of  the  remonstrance 
it  contains  but  little.  For  polemical  neo-pagan- 
ism,  for  the  systematic  revolt  of  the  modern 
man  against  the  asceticism  of  Christianity,  the 
mysticism  of  theology,  the  tyranny  of  church 
and  priestcraft,  we  have  to  go  to  men  like 
Swinburne  and  Carducci.  There  was  little  in 
the  nature  of  Keats  to  inspire  such  magnificent 
utterances  of  reaction  and  challenge  as  are  to 
be  found,  for  instance,  in  the  Hymn  to  Man  of 
the  one  and  the  Inno  a  Satana  of  the  other.' 

'  One  such  positive  utterance,  constituting  as  it  does  an  ex- 
tremely instructive  exception  to  the  above  general  statement, 
should,  however,  be  noted.  In  the  following  Sonnet  VVriilcn 
in  Disgust  of  'Vulgar  Superstitions  we  have  a  very  decided  ex- 
pression of  Keats's  total  lack  of  sympathy  with  the  popular 
forms  and  accompaniments  of  the  religious  feeling  of  his  own 
day  : 

"  The  church  bells  toll  a  melancholy  round, 
Calling  the  people  to  some  other  prayers, 
Some  other  gloominess,  more  dreadful  cares, 
More  hearkening  to  the  sermon's  horrid  sound. 
Surely  the  mind  of  man  is  closely  bound 
In  some  black  spell  ;  seeing  that  each  one  tears 
Himself  from  fireside  joys,  and  Lydian  airs, 
And  converse  high  of  these  with  glory  crown'd. 
Still,  still  they  toll,  and  I  should  feel  a  damp — 
A  chill  as  from  the  tomb,  did  I  not  know 
That  they  are  dying  like  an  outburnt  lamp  ; 


58  STUDIES  IJV  IXTERPRETATIOX. 

It  is  our  purpose,  therefore,  in  speaking  of 
the  paganism  of  Keats  to  direct  attention  to 
the  predominance  in  his  genius  of  the  purely 
aesthetic  element,  and  the  almost  complete 
absence  from  it  of  the  elements  we  describe  as 
religious  and  ethical ;  to  the  man's  high  single- 
hearted  devotion  to  beauty  in  all  its  sensuous 
manifestations ;  to  his  antique  zest  for  life, 
and  intimate  comradeship  with  nature ;  and 
especially  to  his  fine  freedom  from  the  sophisti- 
cation so  profoundly  characteristic  of  our  mod- 
ern world.  "  The  riddle  of  the  painful  earth," 
never  pressed  upon  him  for  solution  ;  and  in 
his  frank,  fresh,  nature  there  was  little  taint  of 
what  Carlyle  called  "  inquisitorial  metaphysics  " 
— the  vialadie  du  Steele,  the  disease  of  thought. 
Others  might  find  themselves  driven  to  exhaust 
their  energies  in  futile  probings  after  theories 

That  't  is  their  sighing,  wailing,  ere  they  go 
Into  oljlivion  ; — that  fresh  flowers  will  grow, 
And  many  glories  of  immortal  stamp." 

Keats's  treatment  of  the  real  church-bell  here,  should  be  con- 
trasted with  his  appreciation  of  the  romantic  beauty  of  the 
vesper  chime  in  The  Eve  of  St.  Mark,  where  it  will  be  re- 
membered the  appeal  is  made  to  him  through  the  imagination. 
I'or  a  man  of  Keats's  temper  there  must  necessarily  have  been 
something  peculiarly  harsh  and  repulsive  about  the  ugly  and 
disagreeable  manifestations  of  the  religious  life  common  to 
puritanism  in  its  modern  forms  of  evangelicalism  and  dissent. 
It  took  the  larger  sympathy  of  a  man  like  Browning  (see 
Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day')  lo  grasp  the  spiritual  reality 
for  which,  in  their  hard,  or  grotesque,  or  distorted  fashions, 
such  things  as  these  none  the  less  stand. 


JOHN  KEATS.  59 

and  explanations.  To  Keats,  life  was  a  fact, 
while  to  most  of  us,  it  is  an  enigma. 

Once  indeed,  with  a  firm  and  strong  hand,  he 
touched  upon  the  dark  problematical  underside 
of  nature,  having  seen  her  for  a  moment,  not  in 
her  robe  of  matchless  beauty,  but  as  Tennyson 
saw  her — "  red  in  tooth  and  claw  "  : 

"  'T  was  a  quiet  eve, 
The  rocks  were  silent,  the  wide  sea  did  weave 
An  untumultuous  fringe  of  silver  foam 
Along  the  fiat  brown  sand  ;  I  was  at  home 
And  should  have  been  most  happy  ; — hut  I  saw 
Too  far  into  tJie  sea,  where  every  maw 
The  greater  or  the  less  feeds  ever  more. — 
But  I  saw  too  distinct  into  the  core 
Of  an  eternal  fierce  destruction, 
And  so  from  happiness  I  was  far  gone. 
Still  am  I  sick  of  it,  and  tho'  to-day 
I  've  gather'd  young  spring  leaves  and  flowers  gay 
Of  periwinkle  and  wild  strawberry, 
Still  do  I  that  most  fierce  destruction  see, — 
The  shark  at  savage  prey — the  hawk  at  pounce — 
The  gentle  robin  like  a  pard  or  ounce, 
Ravening  a  worm  " — 

But,  then,  the  thought  growing  too  heavy  for 
him,  he  breaks  off  with  characteristic  im- 
patience— 

"  Away,  ye  horrid  moods  ! 
Moods  of  one's  mind.     You  know  I  hate  them  well. 
You  know  I  'd  rather  be  a  clapping  bell 


6o  STUDIES  JN  INTERPRETATION. 

In  some  Kamtschatkan  missionary  church, 

Than  with  such  horrid  moods  be  left  i'  the  lurch."  ' 

Here  for  a  moment,  then,  Keats  gives  expres- 
sion to  the  "  horrid  mood,"  in  which  the 
problem  of  nature  had  come  between  himself 
and  the  beauty  of  nature — the  mood  in  which 
the  torturing  spirit  of  inquiry  into  the  meaning 
of  things  had  threatened  to  disturb  his  simple 
unquestioning  enjoyment  of  things  as  he 
actually  found  them.  "Do  not  all  charms  fly 
at  the  mere  touch  of  cold  philosophy  ?  "  Is  not 
knowledge  synonymous  with  disenchantment  ? 
wisdom  with  sorrow?  Alas,  such  is  the  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  matter !     Then — 

"  It  is  a  flaw 
In  happiness  to  see  beyond  our  bourn, —     > 
It  forces  us  in  summer  skies  to  mourn. 
It  spoils  the  singing  of  the  nightingale." 

The  position  here  assumed  is  a  simple  one. 
The  joy  of  life  is  jeopardized  the  moment 
thought  intrudes ;  the  loveliest  fact  of  the 
world  loses  half  its  delicate  charm  if  we  allow 
ourselves  to  theorize  about  it.  There  is  but 
one  way  out  of  our  difficulty.  Let  us  hold 
ourselves  free  from  thought  and  theory. 
Beauty  and  romance  may  thus,  but  thus  only, 
be  still  to  us  a  possession  for  ever. 

^Epistle    to    John  Hamilton    Reynolds   (1818).      Compare 
Edwin  Arnold's  Light  of  Asia,  Book  ii. 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  6 1 

Fully  to  appreciate  the  profound  significance 
of  such  a  conclusion,  we  must  remember  that 
Keats's  philosophical  credo,  so  far  as  it  was 
ever  formulated  by  him,  was  one  of  cheerless 
and  chilling  negativism.  It  receives  its  one 
distinct  utterance  in  the  Sonnet  Written  npon 
the  Top  of  Ben  Nevis,  a  poem  which,  grim  enough 
in  itself,  derives  added  grimness  from  its  asso- 
ciation with  his  unfortunate  Scottish  tour. 

"Read  me  a  lesson,  muse,  and  speak  it  loud 
Upon  the  top  of  Nevis,  blind  in  mist ! 
I  look  into  the  chasms,  and  a  shroud 
Vaporous  doth  hide  them, — just  so  much,  I  wist 
Mankind  do  know  of  Hell  ;  I  look  o'erhead. 
And  there  is  sullen  mist, — even  so  much 
Mankind  can  tell  of  Heaven  ;  mist  is  spread 
Before  the  earth  beneath  me, — even  such. 
Even  so  vague  is  man's  sight  of  himself  ! 
Here  are  the  craggy  stones  beneath  my  feet, — 
Thus  much  I  know,  that,  a  poor  witless  elf 
I  tread  on  them, — that  all  my  eye  doth  meet 
Is  mist  and  crag,  not  only  on  this  height, 
But  in  the  world  of  thought  and  mental  might  !  " 

The  first  comment  on  such  a  poem  is  likely 
to  be,  that  this  is  the  philosophy  of  absolute 
negation — dark  and  dismal  as  the  Scottish  mist 
in  which  the  verses  were  composed  ; '  and  to 

'  For  the  circumstances  under  which  this  sonnet  was  written, 
see  Lord  Houghton's  statement  in  his  Life  and  Letters  of 
Keats,  or  in  Forman's  edition  of  Keats's  Works,  Vol.  ii.,  p. 
312,  note. 


62  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

this  criticism  one  would  hardly  fail  to  add  some 
expression  of  surprise  at  finding  such  an  atti- 
tude towards  life  adopted  by  a  poet  whose 
work,  as  a  whole,  would  never  be  connected 
with  so  joyless  and  uninspiring  a  creed.  How 
comes  it,  we  may  well  ask,  that,  accepting  the 
above  sonnet  as  a  genuine  expression  of  Keats's 
deepest  thought  concerning  man's  relation  to 
himself  and  the  universe,  we  none  the  less  dis- 
cover no  taint  of  its  bleak  and  dreary  skepticism 
in  the  great  body  of  his  verse  ?  The  damp 
mountain-fog  may  indeed  be  taken  to  sym- 
bolize tiie  intellectual  principles  here  for  once 
set  forth  ;  but  is  not  the  true,  the  characteristic 
atmosphere  of  his  poetry,  after  all,  that  of  the 
fresh  and  sunny  valleys  of  the  south-lands  far 
away  ? ' 

'  It  should  be  noted  that  Keats's  work  is  frequently  imbued 
with  that  subtle  sadness  which,  as  has  been  frequently  pointed 
out  (very  clearly  by  Edgar  Allan  Poe  amongst  others), is  insepara- 
ble from  the  apprehension  of  beauty  in  its  highest  manifesta- 
tions. The  touch  of  mutability  upon  all  things  earthly — the 
pathos  inherent  in  the  thought  that  life  is  fleeting,  happiness 
transient,  hope  visionary — the  solemn  reminder,  renewed  with 
every  day's  experiences,  that  as  mortals  we  move  in  a  world  of 
mortality,  "  where  nothing  lasts,  where  all  that  we  have  loved 
or  shall  love,  must  die"  (Amiel,  Journal,  i6  Nov.,  1864), — 
to  the  large  and  tender  melancholy  implied  by  all  this,  the 
genius  of  Keats  was  not  and  could  not  be  unresponsive.  For 
this  is  the  true  melancholy  of  the  pagan  nature,  which  clings 
the  more  passionately  to  all  the  world  can  offer  of  loveliness 
and  joy  from  its  poignant  realization  of  the  haunting  fact  that 
these  things  are  but  momentary — that  beyond  the  sunshine 
there  is  the  blank  darkness,  and  beyond  the  music  llie  great  un- 


JOHN  KEATS.  63 

Here  we  impinge  upon  a  fact  of  cardinal 
importance.  It  is  manifest  that  Keats's  philo- 
sophical negativism  touched  in  but  slight  de- 
gree,  if  at  all,  the  deep  wellsprings  and  sources 
of  his  existence.  His  religious  creed — if  on  the 
strength  of  the  poem  now  referred  to,  his  crude 
and  loose  theorizings  may  be  dignified  by  such  a 
name — was  "  of  his  life  a  thing  apart  " ;  it  did 
not  permeate,  saturate,  modify  the  woof  and 
texture  of  his  being.  The  craving  for  spiritual 
satisfaction,  perennial  and  insistent  with  men  of 
a  different  temperament  from  his,  he  for  his 
part  rarely  experienced  ;  while  the  need  to  un- 
derstand the  world  rationally,  and  to  reach  some 
explanation  of  its  purpose  and  meaning,  had  for 
him  nothing  of  an  imperative  character.  With 
such  matters  as  these,  the  essential  forces  of  his 
character  had  nothing  whatever  to  do.    .There 

broken  silence.  (Compare  many  of  Swinburne's  poems  ;  e.g., 
Anima  Anccps.)  Such  pervasive  sadness  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn,  and  it  finds  definite 
expression  in  the  Ode  ott  Alelaiicholy,  in  the  closing  stanza  of 
which  the  poet  tells  us  that — 

"  She  dwells  with  Beauty — Beauty  that  must  die  ; 
And  Joy,  whose  hand  is  ever  at  his  lips 
Bidding  adieu  ;  and  aching  Pleasure  nigh, 
Turning  to  poison  while  the  bee-mouth  sips  : 
Ay,  in  the  very  temple  of  Delight 
Veiled  Melancholy  has  her  sovran  shrine, 
Though  seen  of  none  save  him  whose  strenuous  tongue 
Can  burst  Joy's  grape  against  his  palate  fine  : 
His  soul  shall  taste  the  sadness  of  her  might, 
And  be  among  her  cloudy  trophies  hung." 


* 


64  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

were  moods,  indeed,  in  which,  not  the  sensuous 
beauty,  but  the  pain  and  travail  of  life  forced 
themselves  upon  him  ;  but  these  were  after  all 
but  moods — "  horrid  moods  " — to  be  repudiated 
as  quickly  as  possible.  There  were  seasons 
when  he  too  found  himself  confronted  by  the 
obstinate  questionings  of  his  age ;  but  while 
others  brooded  over  them  in  vain  search  for 
light  and  satisfaction,  his  nature  enabled  him 
simply  to  throw  them  off.  At  first  this  habit 
of  dismissing  the  harder  and  sharper  facts  of 
life  was  apparently  spontaneous  and  unreasoned 
— an  affair  of  temperament  merely.  But  as  time 
went  on,  and  such  facts  gradually  came  more 
and  more  to  compel  attention,  he  began  to  raise 
this  practice  of  evasion  to  the  plane  of  a  delib- 
erate and  conscious  purpose,  and  to  find  in  it 
the  true  secret  of  poetic  strength  and  greatness. 

On  this  subject  let  us  allow  Keats  to  speak 
for  himself.  Writing  on  the  22d  December, 
1817,  to  his  brothers  George  and  Thomas,  he 
refers  to  a  discussion  which  he  had  then  lately 
had  with  his  friend  Dilke,  and  continues : 

"  At  once  it  struck  me  what  quality  went  to 
form  a  man  of  achievement,  especially  in  litera- 
ture, and  which  Shakespeare  possessed  so  enor- 
mously— I  mean  negative  capability,  that  is, 
[when  a  man  is  capable  of  being  in  uncertainties, 
iLj      /  mysteries,  doubts,  without  any  irritable  reach- 


4^  ^J    /!" 

j[p^  ;c^V  instance,  would  let  go  by  a  fine  isolated  veri 


fcrv-JU-^M  li''''S    ^fter    fact    and    reason.       Coleridge,    for 


JOHN  KEATS.  65 

similitude  caught  from  the  penetraHum  of 
mystery,  from  being  incapable  of  remaining 
content  with  half  knowledge.  This  pursued 
through  volumes  would  perhaps  take  us  no  fur- 
ther than  this,  that  with  a  great  poet  the  sense 
of  beauty  overcomes  every  other  consideration, 
or  rather  obliterates  all  consideration."  ' 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  in  this  re- 
markable passage — the  expression,  it  will  be 
noted,  of  a  purely  artistic  nature — Keats  re- 
veals the  final  secret  of  his  relations  with  life. 
Temperamentally  endowed  with  the  power  of 
throwing  off  our  modern  burden  of  doubt  and 
difficulty,  he  looked  out  upon  the  world  refus- 
ing to  pay  any  heed  to  those  intrusive  questions 
by  which  its  charm  is  broken  and  its  gladness 
marred — refusing  to  allow  his  frank  enjoyment 
of  its  sunshine  and  music  to  be  interfered  with 
by  our  everlasting  and  "  irritable  reaching  after 
fact  and  reason."  His  standpoint  was  thus  as 
far  as  possible  removed  from  that  of  the  philo- 
sophical theorist  or  the  ethical  inquirer.  These 
have  their  own  angle  of  vision  ;  but  from  the 
multitudinous  and  entangled  problems  which 
life  throws  upon  their  hands,  it  is  at  once  the 
poet's  privilege  and  his  duty  to  hold  himself 
aloof. 

"  As  to  the  poetical  character  itself  (I 
mean  that  sort  of  which,  if  I  am  anything,  I 

'  Forman's  edition  of  Keats's  Works,  Vol.  iii.,  pp.  99-100. 
The  italics  are  Keats's  own. 
5 


(i^  STUDIES  JN  INTERPRETATION. 

am  a  member,  that  sort  distiiii^uished  from  the 
Wordsworthian,  or  egotistical  sublime  ;  which  is 
a  thing  per  se,  and  stands  alone),  it  is  not  itself 
— it  has  no  self — it  is  everything  and  nothing — 
it  has  no  character — it  enjoys  light  and  shade 
— it  lives  in  gusto,  be  it  foul  or  fair,  high  or 
low,  rich  or  poor,  mean  or  elevated — it  has  as 
much  delight  in  conceiving  an  lago  as  an  Imo- 
gen. What  shocks  the  virtuous  philosopher  de- 
lights the  cameleon  poet.  It  does  no  harm 
from  its  relish  of  the  dark  side  of  things,  any 
more  than  from  its  taste  for  the  bright  ones, 
because  they  both  end  in  speculation." ' 

All  this  simply  gives  us  a  reasoned  statement 
of  principles  the  roots  of  which,  as  fundamental 
intuitions,  run  deep  down  into  the  sub-soil  of 
Kcats's  nature.  H  is  ideal  of  the  poet  and  of  the 
poet's  attitude  towards  life,  therefore,  represents 
the  unchecked  bias  of  a  temperament  which, 
for  him,  rendered  such  an  ideal  practically  pos- 
sible. And  it  is  in  terms  of  this  central  fact  in 
Keats's  rare  and  striking  personality,  that  the 
various  characteristics  of  his  genius  above 
touched  on — his  power  of  self-detachment  from 
circumstances  by  which  nearly  all  his  great  con- 
temporaries were  profoundly  influenced,  his 
imaginative  escape  into  the  legendary  past,  his 
indifference  to  the  moral  aspects  of  existence, 
and  to  the  ideas  and  problems  of  his  own  age, 

'  Letter  to  Woodhouse,  Oct.  27,   1818,  in  Forman's  edition 
of  Keats's  Works,  Vol.  iii.,  pp.  233-34. 


JOHN  KEATS.  6/ 

his  spontaneous  sympathy  with  pagan  habits  of 
thought,  his  objective  handling  of  nature— have 
one  and  all  to  find  ultimate  interpretation. 

VII. 

No  study  of  Keats,  and  particularly,  there- 
fore, no  such  study  as  the  foregoing,  in  which 
attention  has  been  fixed  almost  exclusively 
upon  the  essential  as  distinguished  from  the 
technical  elements  of  his  work,  can  close  with- 
out due  recognition  of  the  pathetic  fact,  that 
to  him,  as  to  few  indeed  among  his  compeers 
in  genius,  were  denied  "  the  years  that  bring 
the  philosophic  mind."  It  would  manifestly 
be  unsafe  to  speculate  upon  the  changes  that, 
Keats's  thought  might  have  undergone  had 
he  lived  to  reach  even  middle  life  ;  but  that 
changes  would  have  come  over  him,  and  that 
such  changes  would  have  been  great  and  far- 
reaching,  seems  absolutely  certain.  We  know 
how  rich  and  spontaneous  his  genius  was  ;  and 
we  know,  moreover,  that  his  whole  nature  was 
permeated  by  a  rare  power  of  growth.  The 
high,  manly  tone  of  all  his  self-criticism,  his 
mingled  humility  and  self-assertion,  would 
alone  be  sufificient  to  show  this.  "  My  own 
domestic  criticism,"  he  writes  to  Hessey,  "  has 
given  me  pain  without  comparison  beyond 
what  '  Blackwood  '  or  the  '  Quarterly  '  could 
possibly  inflict ;  and  also  when  I  feel  I  am 
right,  no  external  praise  can  give  me  such  a 


68  STUDIES  JiV  INTERPRETATION. 

glow  as  my  own  solitary  rcpcrccption  and  ratifi- 
cation of  what  is  fine.  J.  S.  is  perfectly  right 
in  regard  to  the  '  slip-shod  Endymion.'  That 
is  no  fault  of  mine.  No  !  though  it  may  sound 
a  little  paradoxical,  it  is  as  good  as  I  had  power 
to  make  it  by  myself.  Had  I  been  nervous 
about  its  being  a  perfect  piece,  and  with  that 
view  asked  advice,  it  would  not  have  been 
written  ;  for  it  is  not  in  my  nature  to  fumble. 
I  will  write  independently.  I  have  written  in- 
dependently without  judgment.  I  may  write 
independentl}',  and  luith  judgment  hereafter. 
The  Genius  of  Poetry  must  work  out  its  own  sal- 
vation in  a  man.  It  cannot  be  matured  by  law 
.and  precept,'  but  by  sensation  and  watchfulness 
in  itself.  .  .  .  'In  Endymion  '  I  leaped  head- 
long into  the  sea,  and  thereby  have  become 
better  acquainted  with  the  soundings,  the  quick- 
sands, and  the  rocks,  than  if  I  had  stayed  upon 
the  green  shore,  and  piped  a  silly  pipe,  and  took 
\sic\  tea  and  comfortable  advice."  ' 

And  again  : 

"  If  poetry  comes  not  as  naturally  as  the 
leaves  to  a  tree,  it  had  better  not  come  at  all. 
.  .  .  If  '  Endymion  '  serves  me  as  a  pioneer 
perhaps  I  ought  to  be  content,  for,  thank  God, 
I  can  read  and  perhaps  understand  Shakespeare 
to  his  depths.     ...     I   am  anxious  to  get 

'  Compare  Wordsworth's  sonnet :   "^  Poet  I     He  hath  put 
his  heart  to  school." 

'Oct.  9,  i8iS.      Forman's  Keats,  Vol.  iii.,  pp.  230-31. 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  69 

'  Endymion  '  printed,  that  I  may  forget  it,  and 
proceed."  ' 

In  all  this,  as  once  more  in  the  fine  and  digni- 
fied preface  to  Endyuiion  itself,  we  have  the 
unmistakable  utterance  of  the  true  artist — of 
the  man  who  will  learn  by  trial,  effort,  dis- 
appointment, failure,  and  rise  on  stepping- 
stones  of  his  dead  self  to  higher  things.  Here 
there  is  little  to  remind  us  of  the  mythical 
Keats — the  poor,  puny,  effeminate,  sensual 
weakling,  Avhom  Byron's  cynicism,  and  Hay- 
don's  garrulity,  and  Shelley's  magnificent 
chivalry  combined  to  keep  alive  in  the  imagi- 
nations of  an  uncritical  public,  and  who  started 
into  fresh  vitality  under  the  influence  of  the  un- 
fortunate Fanny  Brawne  letters.  The  man  who 
could  write  in  this  way  while  still  in  the  early 
twenties,  was  surely  capable  of  almost  indefinite 
development ;  and  lovers  of  Keats  can  hardly, 
therefore,  be  blamed  for  their  belief  that  had 
he  lived  even  to  the  age  of  Byron,  he  would 
have  taken  his  place  permanently  among  the 
greatest  English  poets  of  all  time.  There  is 
thus  shown  a  singular  lack  of  spiritual  appre- 
hension in  the  brilliant  lines  in  which  Mrs. 
Browning  speaks  of  the  writer  who,  within  a 
few  brief  years  of  a  failing  life,  strode  forward 
from  Endyviion  to  Hyperion  and  the  Ode  on  a 
Grecian  Urn,  as 

'  Letter  to  Taylor,  Feb.  27,   181 8,  in  Forman's  edition  of 
Keats's  Works,  Vol.  iii.,  pp.  122-23. 


70  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

"  the  man  who  never  stepped 
In  gradual  progress,  like  another  man, 
But  turning  grandly  on  his  central  self, 
Ensphered  himself  in  twenty  perfect  years, 
And  died,  not  young."  ' 

But  while  we  recognize  this  vital  element  of 
growth  in  Keats's  genius,  this  supreme  promise 
of  development,  this  extraordinary  faculty  of 
turning  failure  to  account,  there  still  remains 
the  question,  more  pertinent  to  our  present 
purpose,  as  to  whether  or  not  there  were  indi- 
cations of  approaching  change  in  the  young 
poet's  relations  with  life.  Were  there  any 
signs  that  his  thought  of  the  world  was  likely 
to  become  larger,  more  serious,  more  sympa- 
thetic?— that  the  ethical  note  would  presently 
have  made  itself  heard  ? — that  his  pagan  ca- 
pacity for  the  enjoyment  of  sensuous  beauty  in 
all  its  manifold  forms  w^ould  by-and-by  have 
been  sobered  and  modified  by  a  more  persistent 
and  a  more  pervasive  realization  of  the  sterner 
actualities  of  existence  ? 

Perhaps  yes — perhaps  no  ;  it  is  hard  to  meet 
such  questions  with  a  more  definite  answer  than 
this.  The  fundamental  quality  of  temperament 
is  about  the  last  thing  in  a  man  that  any  change, 
no  matter  how  profound   and   far-reaching,  is 

^Aurora  Leigh,  Book  i.  Scarcely  more  successful  is  the 
reference  in  the  Vision  of  Poets,  \\\\^xe.\\\  the  lines  on  Keats 
contrast  almost  painfully  with  some  of  the  other  admirable 
pieces  of  characterization.  I  low  much  truer  is  the  touch  in  the 
early  sonnet  of  Lowell — To  the  Spirit  of  Keats. 


JOHN  KEA  TS.  J I 

likely  to  affect  ;  and  the  old  proverb,  "  once  a 
Jacobin,  always  a  Jacobin,"  if  not  to  be  accepted 
in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  currently  used,  must 
be  taken  none  the  less  as  pointing  to  a  very 
important  fact.  Keats  was  young,  it  is  true ; 
but  it  is  also  true  that  men  of  spiritual  instinct, 
of  deeply  religious  nature,  habitually  pass,  long 
before  the  age  at  which  he  died,  through  expe- 
riences to  which  he  remained  an  entire  stranger.' 
It  may,  therefore,  I  think,  be  reasonably  in- 
ferred that  the  work  of  Keats's  later  life, 
stronger,  purer,  more  temperate,  more  human, 
though  it  would  surely  have  been,  would  still 
have  been  work  upon  the  general  lines  already 
laid  down — would  still  have  been  dominated 
by  the  same  note,  and  have  partaken  of  the 
same  larger  characteristics. 

Yet  there  are  passages  in  some  of  his  later 
letters — passages,  too,  that  cannot  be  inter- 
preted as  mere  expressions  of  abnormal  mental 
conditions  resulting  from  ill-health  and  depres- 
sion— which,  read  in  connection  with  iheEpislle 
to  Reynolds,  already  referred  to,  show  very 
clearly  the  gradual  obsession  of  his  mind  by 
ideas  alien  to  his  common  habits  of  thought 
and  feeling.  Let  one  such  passage  sufifice  us 
here.  It  is  a  lengthy  one,  but  its  value  fully 
justifies  its  reproduction. 

■  We  may  remind  ourselves  at  this  point  that  the  Lines  Com- 
posed a  Few  Miles  Above  Tintern  Abbey  were  written  when 
Wordsworth  was  only  twenty-eight  years  of  age. 


^2  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

"  An  extensive  knowledge  is  needful  to  think- 
ing people  ;  it  takes  away  the  heat  and  fever, 
and  helps,  by  widening  speculation,  to  ease 
'the  burden  of  the  mystery,*  a  thing  which  I 
begin  to  understand  a  little.  The  difference  of 
high  sensations  with  and  without  knowledge, 
appears  to  me  this  :  in  the  latter  case  we  are 
falling  continually  ten  thousand  fathoms  deep, 
and  being  blown  up  again,  without  wings,  and 
with  all  the  horror  of  a  bare-shouldered  crea- 
ture ;  in  the  former  case  our  shoulders  are 
fledged,  and  we  go  through  the  same  air  and 
space  without  fear.  ...  I  compare  human 
life  to  a  large  mansion  of  many  apartments,  two 
of  which  I  can  only  describe  [i.e.,  only  two  of 
which  I  can  describe],  the  doors  of  the  rest 
being  as  yet  shut  upon  me.  The  first  we  step 
into  we  call  the  Infant,  or  Thoughtless  Cham- 
ber, in  which  we  remain  as  long  as  we  do  not 
think.  We  remain  there  a  long  while,  and  not- 
withstanding the  doors  of  the  second  chamber 
remain  wide  open,  showing  a  bright  appear- 
ance, w^e  care  not  to  hasten  to  it,  but  are  at 
length  imperceptibly  impelled  by  the  awaken- 
ing of  the  thinking  principle  within  us.  We  no 
sooner  get  into  the  second  chamber,  which  I 
shall  call  the  Chamber  of  Maiden  Thought, 
than  we  become  intoxicated  with  the  light  and 
the  atmosphere.  We  see  nothing  but  pleasant 
wonders,  and  think  of  delaying  there  forever  in 
delight.  However,  among  the  effects  this  breath- 


JOHN  KEATS.  73 

ing  is  father  of,  is  that  tremendous  one  of  sharp- 
ening one's  vision  into  the  heart  and  nature  of 
man,  of  convincing  one's  nerves  that  the  world  is 
full  of  misery  and  heartbreak,  pain,  sickness  and 
oppression,  whereby  this  Chamber  of  Maiden 
Thought  becomes  gradually  darkened,  and  at 
the  same  time,  on  all  sides  of  it,  many  doors 
are  set  open — but  all  dark — all  leading  to  dark 
passages.  We  see  not  the  balance  of  good  and 
evil ;  we  are  in  a  mist ;  we  are  now  in  that  state, 
we  feel  the  '  burden  of  the  mystery.'  To  this 
point  was  Wordsworth  come,  as  far  as  I  can 
conceive,  when  he  wrote  Tintcrn  Abbey ^  and  it 
seems  to  me  that  his  genius  is  explorative  of 
those  dark  passages.  Now  if  we  live  and  go  on 
thinking,  we  too  shall  explore  them.  ...  I 
may  have  read  these  things  before,  but  I  never 
had  even  a  dim  perception  of  them.  .  .  . 
After  all,  there  is  certainly  something  real  in 
the  world."  * 

No  comment  is  needed  to  emphasize  the  sig- 
nificance of  this  remarkable  passage.  The  ques- 
tion inevitably  arising  as  we  read  it  is  :  Are  we 
not  justified  in  believing  that,  as  time  went  on, 
its  deeper  note  would  gradually  have  crept  into 
the  writer's  verse  ? — that  little  by  little  over  his 
bright,  fresh,  unsophisticated  nature  would  have 
stolen  something  of  its  subduing  sadness,  of  its 
strengthening  and  ennobling  sense  of  reality  ? 

^  Letter  to  Reynolds,  May  3,   1818  ;  Forman's  ^ifa/j-,  Vol. 
iii.,  pp.  150-55- 


74  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

— that  Keats  was  even  then  approaching  a  crisis 
in  his  spiritual  development,  and  that  the  first 
rich  output  of  his  genius  is  to  be  held  as  noth- 
ing compared  with  the  splendid  fruitage  that 
his  maturer  manhood  would  almost  certainly 
have  produced  ?  All  this  must  indeed  remain 
a  matter  of  mere  speculation.  "  What  is  writ  is 
writ,"  and  our  part  is  finally  to  accept  with  be- 
fitting gratitude  the  priceless  legacy  left  by  the 
dying  youth  to  a  world  that  cares  too  little  for 
the  ideal  beauty  to  whose  service  his  own  brief 
life  was  consecrated.  Yet  the  feeling  of  incom- 
pleteness, the  disturbing  thought  of  incalculable 
loss,  will  haunt  us,  none  the  less  ;  and  we  can- 
not now  close  the  volumes  in  which  his  memory 
lies  embalmed  forever,  without  a  profounder 
realization  of  all  that  we  mean  when  we  speak 
of  Keats  as  supreme  among  "the  inheritors  of 
unfulfilled  renown." 


II. 

ARTHUR   HUGH    CLOUGH. 


II. 

ARTHUR   HUGH    CLOUGH. 


UPON  the  republication  by  a  Boston  house 
of  a  collection  of  poems  by  Alexander 
Smith,  a  young  Scotchman  whose  work 
had  then  recently  been  attracting  considerable 
attention  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
Clough,  then  resident  in  this  country,  con- 
tributed a  criticism  of  the  volume  to  the  North 
American  Review  for  July,  1853-'  After  insti- 
tuting some  comparison  between  A  Life  Drama, 
the  most  ambitious  poem  in  the  book,  and 
Keats's  Endymion,  the  writer  continued  his  arti- 
cle in  this  remarkable  and  significant  strain  : 

"  We  are  not  sorry,  in  the  meantime,  that 
this  Endymion  is  not  upon  Mount  Latmos. 
The  natural  man  does  pant  within  us  after 
flumina  silvasque  ;  yet  really,  and  truth  to  tell, 
is  it  not  upon  the  whole  an  easy  matter  to  sit 

>  The  article  was  entitled,  "  Review  of  Some  Poems  by 
Alexander  Smith  and  Matthew  Arnold."  It  has  since  been 
reprinted  in  Clough's  Frose  Remains,  edited  by  his  widow — a 
volume  to  which  frequent  reference  will  be  made  in  the  pres- 
ent study. 

77 


78  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

under  a  green  tree  by  a  purling  brook  and  in- 
dite pleasing  stanzas  on  the  beauties  of  nature 
and  fresh  air?  Or  is  it,  we  incline  to  ask,  so 
very  great  an  exploit  to  wander  out  into  the 
pleasant  field  of  Greek  or  Latin  mythology,  and 
reproduce,  with  more  or  less  of  modern  adapta- 
tion, 

'  the  shadows 
Faded    and   pale   yet   immortal,    of    Faunas,   the 
nymphs,  and  the  graces '  ? 

Studies  of  the  literature  of  any  distant  age 
or  country;  all  the  imitations  and  qiiasi-X.x'ix.ns- 
lations  which  help  to  bring  together  into  a 
single  focus  the  scattered  rays  of  human  intel- 
ligence; poems  after  classical  models,  poems 
from  Oriental  sources,  and  the  like,  have  un- 
doubtedly a  great  literary  value.  Yet  there  is 
no  question,  it  is  plain  and  patent  enough, 
that  people  much  prefer  Vanity  Fair  and 
Bleak  House.  Why  so  ?  Is  it  simply  be- 
cause we  have  grown  prudent  and  prosaic,  and 
should  not  welcome,  as  our  fathers  did,  the 
Marmions  and  the  Rokcbys,  the  Childe 
Harolds  and  the  Corsairs?  or  is  it,  that  to  be 
widely  popular,  to  gain  the  ear  of  multitudes, 
to  shake  the  hearts  of  men,  poetry  should 
deal,  more  than  at  present  it  usually  does, 
with  general  wants,  ordinary  feelings,  the  obvi- 
ous rather  than  the  rare  facts  of  human  nature? 
Could  it  not  attempt  to  convert  into  beauty 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  79 

and  thankfulness,  or  at  least  into  some  form 
and  shape,  some  feeling,  at  any  rate,  of  content 
— the  actual,  palpable  things  with  which  our 
every-day  life  is  concerned  ;  introduce  into 
business  and  weary  task-work  a  character  and 
a  soul  of  purpose  and  reality  ;  intimate  to  us 
relations  which,  in  our  unchosen,  peremptorily 
appointed  posts,  in  our  grievously  narrow  and 
limited  spheres  of  action,  w^e  still,  in  and 
through  all,  retain  to  some  central,  celestial, 
fact?  Could  it  not  console  us  with  a  sense  of 
significance,  if  not  of  dignity,  in  that  often 
dirty,  or  at  least  dingy,  work,  which  it  is  the 
lot  of  so  many  of  us  to  have  to  do,  and  which 
some  one  or  other,  after  all,  must  do  ?  Might 
it  not  divinely  condescend  to  all  infirmities  ;  be 
in  all  points  tempted  as  we  are  ;  exclude  noth- 
ing, least  of  all  guilt  and  distress,  from  its  wide 
fraternization  ;  not  content  itself  merely  with 
talking  of  what  may  be  better  elsewhere,  but 
seek  also  to  deal  with  what  is  here  ?  We  could 
each  one  of  us,  alas,  be  so  much  that  some- 
how we  find  we  are  not ;  we  have  all  of  us 
fallen  away  from  so  much  that  we  still  long  to 
call  ours.  Cannot  the  Divine  Song  in  some 
way  indicate  to  us  our  unity,  though  from  a 
great  way  off,  with  those  happier  things  ;  in- 
form us,  and  prove  to  us,  that  though  we  are 
what  we  are,  we  may  yet  in  some  way,  even  in 
our  abasement,  even  by  and  through  our  daily 
work,  be  related  to  the  purer  existence?" 


8o  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

The  thought  running  through  the  above 
passage — that  poetry  if  it  is  to  contend  suc- 
cessfully against  the  ever-growing  power  of 
prose  fiction,  must  concern  itself  more  sympa- 
thetically than  it  habitually  does  with  the  in- 
terests and  activities  of  the  present,  and  cease 
to  withdraw  itself  into  a  world  of  dead  ideas 
and  visionary  hopes  ; — this  thought  finds  fur- 
ther expression  in  one  of  Clough's  miscella- 
neous poems.  Appealing  to  the  writer  of  verse 
to  accept  his  responsibilities  by  becoming,  in 
the  largest  sense,  the  illuminator  and  interpre- 
ter of  modern  life,  he  exclaims: 

"  Come,  poet,  come  ! 
A  thousand  laborers  ply  their  task. 
And  what  it  tends  to  scarcely  ask, 
And  trembling  thinkers  on  the  brink 
Shiver,  and  know  not  how  to  think. 
To  tell  the  purport  of  their  pain, 
And  what  our  silly  joys  contain  ; 
In  lasting  lineaments  portray 
The  substance  of  the  shadowy  day  ; 
Our  real  and  inner  deeds  rehearse. 
And  make  our  meaning  clear  in  verse  : 
Come,  poet,  come  !  for  but  in  vain 
We  do  the  work  or  feel  the  pain. 
And  gather  up  the  seeming  gain. 
Unless  before  the  end  thou  come 
To  take,  ere  they  are  lost,  their  sum." 

It  is  worth  while  to  begin  our  study  of 
Clough  with  these  characteristic  citations,  since 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  8 1 

they  help  us  to  realize  at  once  certain  funda- 
mental qualities  of  his  genius  upon  which  we 
shall  here  have  to  lay  stress — his  strong  sense 
of  actuality  and  fact ;  his  intense  appreciation 
of  the  spiritual  difficulties  of  modern  civiliza- 
tion ;  his  insistence  upon  the  poet's  high  place 
and  subtle  power  as  a  leader  and  inspirer  of 
men.  Turning  from  the  works  of  Keats  to  the 
writings  of  the  man  with  whom  we  have  now 
to  deal,  we  are  conscious  of  passing  at  once 
into  a  totally  different  emotional  atmosphere. 
Clough  is,  in  the  most  ample  sense  of  the  term, 
a  man  of  his  age  and  country.  Thrown  into 
the  midst  of  the  discord  and  striving,  the  dust 
and  din,  of  our  nineteenth-century  world,  he 
refuses  from  first  to  last  to  ignore  or  turn  aside 
from  the  conditions  by  which  he  finds  himself 
everywhere  beset.  It  is  not  for  him  to  seek 
the  imaginative  refuge  which,  each  in  his  own 
way,  Keats  and  Rossetti  alike  succeeded  in 
establishing  for  themselves  as  a  way  of  escape 
from  the  present  and  the  real.  Hideous  and 
unattractive,  complex  and  enigmatical  as  civili- 
zation may  often  seem  to  be,  he  will  at  least 
look  its  facts  and  its  possibilities  fairly  and 
frankly  in  the  face.  "With  him  there  shall  be 
no  elusion,  no  evasion,  no  recourse  to  the 
unsubstantial  dreamland  of  poetic  utopianism. 
A  scholar  of  instinct,  habit,  training,  associa- 
tion, he  is  nevertheless  prepared  to  abandon 
the  "  trim  poetic  academe "  of  his   early  life 


82  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

and  to  step  down  boldly  into  the  arena  of  our 
modern  conflicts  and  confusions,  even  though 
"  his  piping  "  ^las  thereby  to  take  a  "  troubled 
sound,"  and  his  ilutc  to  lose  for  ever  "  its 
happy  country  tone," '  And  such  being  his 
relation  to  the  world  of  present  fact  he  was 
naturally  impatient  of  the  poetry  which  delib- 
erately had  forsaken  the  living  impulses  of  to- 
day for  the  shadowy  mythologies  of  yesterday 
or  the  still  more  shadowy  promises  of  to-mor- 
row— naturally  prone,  as  wc  have  seen,  to  ac- 
centuate his  belief  that  the  poet  should  stand 
forth  as  guide,  leader,  counsellor,  prophet, 
friend,  for  the  dumb  and  struggling  generations 
of  our  great  present-day  world. 

Perhaps  the  quality  in  Clough's  character 
which  of  all  others  most  impresses  the  sym- 
pathetic student  of  his  work,  and  comes  into 
clearer  and  clearer  relief  with  every  fresh  in- 
quiry into  the  circumstances  and  trials  of  his 
life,  is  his  splendid  sanity  of  mind — his  rare 
intellectual  clearness  of  vision,  honesty,  and 
unflinching  courage.  Edgar  Allan  Poe  once 
complained  of  Bulwer  Lytton  "  that  he  would 
rather  sentimentalize  upon  a  vulgar  although 
picturesque  error  "  than  frankly  accept  a  dis- 
agreeable and  inexorable  truth.'  This  common 
kind  of  mental  cowardice  was  entirely  foreign 

'  MaUhew  Arnold,  Thyrsis  :  A  Monody  to  Commemorate  the 
Author's  Friend,  Arthur  Hugh  Clotigh. 
-  Marginalia,  xxi. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  83 

to  Clough's  genius.  The  roots  of  his  whole 
being  struck  firmly  down  into  the  deepest  soil 
of  fact ;  and  to  hold  fast  to  this  was  for  him 
the  first  and  last  requirement  of  any  healthy 
thinking  or  living — a  requirement  to  be  fulfilled 
at  any  cost.  Hence  his  acknowledged  dissatis- 
faction with  Coleridge,  a  teacher  who,  he  had  rea- 
son to  believe,  might  otherwise  have  proved  of 
help  to  him  in  the  progress  of  his  thought.' 
"  I  keep  wavering,"  he  writes,  "  between  admir- 
ation of  his  exceedingly  great  perceptive  and 
analytical  power,  and  other  wonderful  points,and 
inclination  to  turn  away  altogether  from  a  man 
who  has  so  great  a  lack  of  all  reality  and  actual- 
ity.'"' Keenly  alive  to  the  manifold  dangers  of 
that  kind  of  irresponsible  speculation  of  which 
the  nebulous  metaphysics  of  Coleridge  furnished 
only  too  glaring  an  example,  he  himself  stub- 
bornly refused  to  be  misled  by  sentimental 
caprice,  the  jugglery  of  so-called  philosophy,  or 
the  various  popular  systems  of  theological 
special-pleading,  into  any  fatal  confusion  of  sub- 
stance and  shadow — of  things  as  they  are  and 
things  as  we  would  fain  have  them  to  be.  This 
is  what  Mr.  R.  H.  Hutton  must  mean  when  he 
says,  rather  narrowly,  that  Clough  "  trusted  his 
thoughts,  not  his  feelings."'     How  firmly  and 

'  See  the  reference    to  Coleridge's  "  antidotive  power"  in 
letter  to  his  sister.  May,  1847  {Prose  Remains,  p.  113). 

2  Letter  to  Simpkinson,  Feb.,  1841  {Prose  Remaitis,  p.  88). 
'^Clough    and   Atniel,   in   his    Criticisms  on    Contemporary 
ThougJit  and  Thinkers,  Vol.  i.,  p.  212. 


84  STUDIES  IN   INTERPRETATION. 

solidly  the  foundations  of  his  nature  were  in 
this  Avay  laid,  is  strikingly  shown  in  the  follow- 
ing passage  from  one  of  his  American  letters  : 

"  I  think  I  must  have  been  getting  into  a  little 
mysticism  lately.  It  won't  do:  twice  two  are  four 
all  the  world  over,  and  there  's  no  harm  in  its 
being  so  ;  'tis  n't  the  devil's  doing  that  it  is; 
il  faiit  sy  soiunettrc,  and  all  right.  Some  of  my 
companions  are  too  much  in  the  religiose  vein 
to  be  always  quite  wholesome  company.  This 
climate  also  is,  I  think,  mystical."  ' 

These  sentences  give  us  a  clear  declaration  of 
dough's  intellectual  position  ;  and  if  we  need 
a  commentary  upon  them  we  have  only  to  turn 
to  a  letter  dated  just  a  month  later.  "  What  I 
mean  by  mysticism,"  he  then  writes,  evidently 
in  explanation  of  the  foregoing  remarks,  "  is 
letting  feelings  run  on  without  thinking  of 
the  reality  of  their  object,  letting  them  out 
merely  like  water.  The  plain  rule  in  all  mat- 
ters is,  not  to  think  of  what  you  arc  thinking 
about  the  question,  but  to  look  straight  out  at 
things,  and  let  them  affect  you  ;  otherwise  how 
can  you  judge  at  all?  Look  at  them,  at  any 
rate,  and  judge  while  looking."  " 

We  are  loth  to  multiply  quotations,  yet  it  is 
so  important  for  our  present  purpose  that  we 
should  get  as  near  as  possible  to  the  foundation- 
principles  of  Clough's  philosophic  thought  that 

'  Letter  of  Feb.  9,  1853  {Prose  Remains,  pp.  202-3). 
-  Letter  of  March  9,  1853  {Prose  Remains,  p.  207). 


ARTHUR   HUGH   C LOUGH.  85 

space  must  be  found  for  another  extract  deal- 
ing with  the  same  general  theme.  Writing  to 
a  friend,  unnamed,  in  March,  1852,  he  thus  de- 
clares himself : 

"  As  to  mysticism,  to  go  along  with  it  even 
counter  to  fact  and  to  reason  may  sometimes 
be  tempting,  though  to  do  so  would  take  me 
right  away  off  the  terra  firma  of  practicable 
duty  and  business  into  the  limbo  of  unrevealed 
things,  the  forbidden  terra  incognita  of  vague 
hopes  and  hypothetical  aspirations.  But  when 
I  lose  my  legs,  I  lose  my  head  ;  I  am  seized 
with  spiritual  vertigo  and  meagrims  unutterable, 

"It  seems  His  newer  will 
We  should  not  think  at  all  of  Him,  but  turn. 
And  of  the  world  that  He  has  given  us  make 
What  best  we  may.' 

"  .  .  .  Lay  not  your  hand  upon  the  veil  of 
the  inner  sanctuary,  to  try  and  lift  it  up ;  go, 
thou  proselyte  of  the  gate,  and  do  thy  service 
where  it  is  permitted  thee.  Is  it  for  nothing, 
but  for  the  foolish  souls  of  men  to  be  discon- 
tented and  repine  and  whimper  at,  that  He 
made  this  very  tolerably  beautiful  earth,  with 
its  logic  and  its  arithmetic,  and  its  exact  and 
punctual  multifarious  arrangements,  etc,  etc.,  ? 
Is  it  the  end  and  object  of  all  finite  creation 
that  sentimental  human  simpletons  may  whine 

'  These  lines  with  slight  verbal  alteration,  will  be  found  also 
in  Dipsychus,  Part  ii. ,  Scene  4. 


86  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

about  their  infinite  longings  ?  Was  it  ordered 
that  twice  two  should  make  four,  simply  for  the 
intent  that  boys  and  girls  should  be  cut  to  the 
heart  that  they  do  not  make  five  ?  Be  content, 
when  the  veil  is  raised,  perhaps  they  will  make 
five  !     Who  knows  ?  "  ' 

It  would  hardly  be  exaggerating  the  impor- 
tance of  these  passages  to  describe  them  as  for- 
mulating for  us  the  central  principle  of  Clough's 
intellectual  life.  It  is  not  remarkable,  therefore, 
that  to  the  doctrine  which  they  embody,  the 
Avriter  should  recur  again  and  again  in  his  verse. 
Take  such  lines  as  these  from  the  Aiuotirs  de 
Voyage : 

"  What  with  trusting  myself,  and  seeking  support 

from  within  me, 
Almost  I  could  believe  I  had  gained  a  religious 

assurance. 
Formed  in  my  own  poor  soul  a  great  moral  basis 

to  rest  on. 
Ah,  but  indeed  I  see,  I  feel  it  factitious  entirely  ; 
I  refuse,  reject,  and  jnit  it  utterly  from  me  ; 
I  will  look  straight  out,  see  things,  not  try  to  evade 

them  ; 
Fact  shall  be  fact  for  me,  and  the  Truth  the  Truth 

as  ever, 
Flexible,  changeable,  vague,   and  multiform,   and 

doubtful. — 
Off,  and  depart  to  the  void,  thou  subtle,  fanatical 

tempter  " — ' 

'  Prose  Remains,  pp.  180-81.  'Canto  v.,  5. 


3 


ARTHUR   HUGH  CLOUGH.  8/ 

and  it  is  evident  that  although  this  declaration 
is  put  dramatically  into  the  mouth  of  Claude, 
the  unheroic  hero,  Claude  is  after  all  here,  as 
frequently  elsewhere  in  the  poem,  the  expo- 
nent of  the  author's  own  ideas.  In  the  solemn 
warning  of  this  couplet  from  Dipsychus — 

"  But  play  no  tricks  upon  thy  soul,  O  man  ; 
Let  fact  be  fact,  and  life  the  thing  it  can," —  ' 

we  have  Clough  once  again  insisting  upon  the 
first  article  of  his  philosophic  creed — the  steady 
acceptance  of  life  as  it  actually  is,  with  all  its  dis- 
appointments, difificulties,  and  disenchantments ; 
while  for  the  remoter  issues  of  this  cardinal  con- 
viction, we  have  only  to  turn  to  such  a  passage 
as  the  following,  in  which  through  the  mouth 
of  Philip  Hewson  he  deliberately  enunciates  his 
undeviating  faith  in  reality  : 

"  Better  a  crust  of  bread,  than  a  mountain  of  paper 

confections. 
Better    a   daisy  in   earth,   than    a    dahlia    cut    and 

gathered, 
Better  a  cowslip  with  root,  than  a  prize  carnation 

without  it  "  ; " 

or  this,  in  which  discussing,  through  the  utter- 
ances of  another  of  his  characters,  the  general 
relations  of  the  good  and  the  beautiful  as  they 
are   manifested    especially   in    womanhood,  he 

'  Scene  2. 

^  The  Bothie  of  Tober-na-  VuoUch,  Canto  ii. 


88  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

thus    delivers    himself    of    his    aesthetic    judg- 
ment : 

"  Every  woman  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  Cathedral, 
Built  on   the  ancient  plan,  a  Cathedral  pure  and 

perfect, 
Luilt  by  that  only  law,  that  Use  be  suggester  of 

Beauty, 
Nothing  concealed  that  is  done,  but  all  things  done 

to  adornment. 
Meanest  utilities  seized  as  occasions  to  grace  and 

embellish."  * 

It  will  help  us  to  a  further  appreciation  of 
the  most  important  constituent  elements  in 
dough's  mental  make-up — his  firm,  unyielding 
grasp  upon  actuality,  his  insistence  upon  the 
sanctity  of  fact,  his  dread  of  mysticism,  his 
hatred  of  vagueness  and  illusion — if  we  here 
transcribe  a  paragraph  or  two  embodying  his 
opinions  concerning  the  eighteenth  century — 
that  century  of  utilitarianism  and  cold  common- 
sense  which  it  has  been  the  habit  of  most  post- 
romantic  poets  to  discredit  and  abuse.  Dealing 
with  the  general  spirit  of  the  age  of  enlighten- 
ment and  reason,  and  with  the  dominant  philos- 
ophy of  the  time,  he  writes  : 

"  Its  temper  was,  I  suppose,  narrow  and  ma- 
terial ;  bent  upon  the  examination  of  phenom- 
ena, it  admitted  only  such  as  present  themselves 
to  the  lower  and  grosser  senses  ;  to  the  notices 

'  TJie  Bothie  of  Tober-na-  Vuolich,  Canto  v. 


ARTHUR   HUGH  CLOUGH.  89 

of  the  higher  and  purer  it  peremptorily  refused 
its  attention.  We  cannot  hvc  without  the  im- 
palpable air  which  we  breathe,  any  more  than 
without  the  solid  earth  which  we  tread  upon  ; 
the  intimations  of  a  spiritual  world  of  which  we 
cannot  be  rigidly,  and,  as  it  were,  by  all  our 
senses,  certified,  constitute  for  our  inner  life  an 
element  as  essential  as  the  plain  matter  of  fact 
without  which  nothing  can  be  done.  But  it  is 
certain  also  that  without  that  matter  of  fact 
nothing  can  be  done,  and,  moreover,  very  little 
can  be  thought :  palpable  things  by  divine  right, 
by  inevitable  necessity,  ■  and  intelligent  ordi- 
nance, claim  our  habitual  attention  ;  we  are 
more  concerned  with  our  steps  upon  the  ground 
than  our  inhalation  of  the  atmosphere;  stories 
of  the  apparition  of  ghosts  may  very  likely  be 
true,  but  even  if  they  are  it  matters  extremely 
little. 

"  This  austere  love  of  truth  ;  this  righteous 
abhorence  of  illusion  ;  this  rigorous,  uncompro- 
mising rejection  of  the  vague,  the  untestified, 
the  merely  probable ;  this  stern  conscientious 
determination  without  paltering  and  prevarica- 
tion to  admit,  if  things  are  bad,  that  they  are 
so  ;  this  resolute  upright  purpose,  as  of  some 
transcendental  man  of  business,  to  go  thor- 
oughly into  the  accounts  of  the  world,  and 
make  out  once  for  all  how  they  stand  :  such  a 
spirit  as  this,  I  may  say,  claims  more  than  our 
attention — claims  our  reverence. 


90  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION'. 

"  W'c  must  not  lose  it, — we  must  hold  fast  by 
it,  precious  to  us  as  Shakespeare's  intellectual 
or  Milton's  moral  sublimities;  while  our  eyes 
look  up  with  them,  our  feet  must  stay  them- 
selves firmly  here.  Such,  I  believe,  is  the  strong 
feeling  of  the  English  nation ;  the  spirit  of 
Newton  and  of  Locke  possesses  us  at  least  in 
as  full  measure  as  that  of  any  one  of  their 
predecessors."  ' 

These  would  at  any  time  have  been  coura- 
geous and  wholesome  words,  and  at  the  period 
when  they  were  written  they  were  especially 
timely  and  appropriate ;  but  our  concern  here 

'  Lecture  on  the  Development  of  English  Literature  frvin 
Chaucer  to  Words'Morth  {Prose  Remains,  pp.  347-4S).  Con- 
trast with  this  the  heated  denunciations  of  Carlyle.  In 
connection  with  the  above  passage  it  is  interesting  to  remem- 
ber that  Clough  frankly  advised  one  poet  of  his  time  to  study 
the  prose  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  his  review  of 
Alexander  Smith's  volume,  already  cited,  he  writes  :  "  It  may 
be  a  groundless  fancy,  yet  we  do  fancy,  that  there  is  a  whole 
hemisphere,  so  to  say,  of  the  English  language  which  he 
[Smith]  has  left  unvisited.  His  diction  feels  to  us  as  if  be- 
tween Milton  and  Burns  he  had  not  read,  and  between  Shake- 
speare and  Keats  had  seldom  admired.  Certainly  there  is 
but  little  inspiration  in  the  compositions  of  the  last  century  ; 
yet  English  was  really  best  and  most  naturally  written  when 
there  was,  perhaps,  least  to  write  about.  To  obtain  a  real 
command  of  the  language,  some  familiarity  with  the  prose 
writers,  at  any  rate,  of  that  period,  is  almost  essential ;  and  to 
write  out,  as  a  mere  daily  task,  passages,  for  example,  of 
Goldsmith,  would  do  a  verse-writer  of  the  nineteenth  century 
as  much  good,  we  believe,  as  the  study  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher"  {Prose  Remains,  p.  378).  It  cannot  be  denied 
that  there  is  much  sound  sense  in  this  advice. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  9 1 

is  neither  with  their  boldness  nor  with  tlieir 
good  sense,  but  solely  with  the  light  they 
throw  for  us  upon  the  writer's  personal  charac- 
ter and  bent  of  mind.  There  was,  as  we  now 
understand,  much  in  Clough's  nature  which  re- 
sponded spontaneously  and  sympathetically  to 
the  predominant  temper  of  eighteenth-century 
life  and  thought.  The  "  austere  love  of  truth," 
the  "  righteous  abhorrence  of  illusion,"  the  stern 
determination  to  admit  "  if  things  are  bad,  that 
they  are  so  "  ;  all  these  high  intellectual  quali- 
ties which  he  above  animadverts  upon  as 
claiming  not  only  attention  but  reverence,  are 
deeply  rooted  elements  of  his  own  nature  which 
may  well  arouse  similar  feelings  of  admiration 
in  ourselves.  Mentally  sane,  honest,  intrepid  to 
the  last  degree — so  his  life  and  his  words  alike 
describe  him  :  a  clear  and  direct  thinker  ;  a  man 
impatient  of  shams  and  figments  of  every  kind  ; 
frank  with  himself  no  less  than  with  others; 
intolerant  of  self-deception ;  with  a  tempera- 
mental horror  of  the  vague,  the  mawkish,  the 
sentimental ; '  always  resolutely  determined  to 
see  fact  and  to  make  the  best  of  it ; — such  was 

^  Notice,  for  the  interesting  side-light  which  it  throws  upon  the 
integrity  of  Clougli's  character,  the  following  passage  from  one 
of  his  letters  to  his  sister  :  "  I  have  not  read  Emilia  Wynd- 
ham,  but  I  did  read  a  long  time  ago  Two  Old  Mens  Talcs, 
by  the  same  author,  and  they  certainly  were,  as  I  am  told 
Emilia  VVyndham  is,  too  pathetic  a  great  deal.  I  don't  want 
to  cry  except  for  some  good  reason  ;  it  is  '  pleasant  but  wrong' 
in  my  mind  "  {Prose  Retnains,  pp.  11 2-1 3). 


92  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

Arthur  Hugh  Clough — in  the  noblest  sense  of 
that  much-abused  term,  a  genuine  seeker  after 
truth. 

But  such  a  summary,  after  all, — as  our  last 
quotation  taken  even  by  itself  suffices  to  show 
us — represents  but  one  side  of  the  man's  char- 
acter. He  could  indeed  praise  the  eighteenth 
century  for  its  cool  common-sense,  its  hatred 
of  illusion,  its  repudiation  of  the  visionary  and 
the  mock-heroic,  and  the  practical  spirit  which 
dictated  all  its  efforts  in  philosophy,  in  religion, 
and  in  general  life.  Yet  he  could  not  but  feel 
that  the  view  of  man  and  nature  insisted  upon 
by  the  great  exponents  of  rationalism  was 
necessarily  partial  and  one-sided.  Wholesome 
and  helpful,  as  far  as  it  went,  and  of  special 
value  as  a  corrective  to  the  loose  and  inconse- 
quential tendencies  of  current  speculation,  it 
nevertheless  appeared  to  him  to  be  faulty  and 
insufficient,  because  it  left  the  entire  domain 
of  the  transcendental  systematically  out  of 
consideration.  "  We  cannot  live  without  the 
impalpable  air  which  we  breathe,  any  more  than 
without  the  solid  earth  which  we  tread  upon  ; 
the  intimations  of  a  spiritual  world  of  which 
we  cannot  be  rigidly,  and,  as  it  were,  by  all  our 
senses  certified,  constitute  for  our  inner  life  an 
element  as  essential  as  the  plain  matter  of  fact 
without  which  nothing  can  be  done."  In  this 
sentence,  as  we  have  seen,  Clough  enters  a 
passing   protest   against   the   narrowness    and 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  93 

superficiality  of  that  spirit  of  enlightenment  in 
which  he  none  the  less  found  so  much  to 
arouse  his  sympathy  and  respect.  But  there  is 
something  more  given  us  here  than  a  mere  criti- 
cism of  eighteenth-century  deficiencies  and  lim- 
itations. In  writing  these  words,  Clough  dis- 
tinctly enunciates  the  spiritual  demands  of  his 
own  nature.  He  confesses  that  for  himself,  at 
all  events, — though  he  will  have  his  feet  always 
firmly  planted  upon  the  solid  ground  of  fact — 
the  impalpable  air,  the  subtle  atmosphere  of 
the  religious  emotion,  is  a  fundamental  essen- 
tial of  a  healthy  life. 

Here,  then,  we  have  to  supplement  our  char- 
acterization of  Clough's  mental  temper  and 
outlook  by  recognition  of  the  important  quali- 
ties thus  brought  to  our  knowledge.  Keen- 
sighted,  clear-headed,  candid,  brave, — all  this  he 
was  beyond  question  ;  and  for  such  a  man  the 
ability  to  look  out  steadily  upon  life,  to  relin- 
quish old  illusions  when  they  are  shown  to  be 
illusions,  to  bow  before  facts  when  they  are 
proven  to  be  facts,  becomes  before  all  else  the 
guiding  principle  as  well  as  the  ultimate  pur- 
pose of  intellectual  self-discipline.  But  he  was 
at  the  same  time  endowed  with  the  highest  and 
most  sensitive  religious  nature,  and  the  spiritual 
cravings  within  him — the  yearnings  for  some- 
thing beyond  the  domain  of  experience  and 
proof — imperatively  refused  to  be  stifled  or  set 
aside.     The  merely  phenomenal  conclusions  of 


94  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

positive  philosophy,  therefore,  though  he  was 
intensely  alive  to  their  worth,  afforded  him  no 
kind  of  permanent  satisfaction  ;  and  to  rest  in 
these  conclusions,  as  if  they  were  final,  com- 
plete, and  all-comprehensive,  was  for  him  a 
simple  impossibility.  Thus  he  could  not 
remain  content  with  the  simple  intellectual 
apprehension  of  fact  as  fact.  Faith  for  him 
must  be  rooted  in  reality,  but  reality  must  at 
the  same  time  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  faith. 
Frankly  accepting  the  changing  order  of  the 
world,  the  accumulation  of  knowledge,  the  rapid 
expansion  of  thought,  as  establishing  the  con- 
ditions of  speculation  to  which,  graciously  or 
ungraciously,  we  must  all  of  us  at  last  sub- 
mit, he  none  the  less  found  himself  continually 
haunted  by  an  ulterior  question  of  the  first  im- 
portance : — what  do  these  things  mean  when 
looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  soul? 
How  do  they  stand  related  to  the  religious 
hopes  and  aspirations  of  the  race  ? 

And  here,  if  we  mistake  not,  we  come  upon 
the  real  secret  of  dough's  inner  life,  with  its 
struggles  and  disappointments,  its  suspense, 
dubitation,  and  deep-seated  unrest.  His  na- 
ture was  out  of  balance  with  itself.  The 
thinker  within  him  led  whither  the  poet  often- 
times could  not  follow  ;  the  progressive  intel- 
lect had  left  behind  it  the  more  conserva- 
tive feelings.  The  problems  that  met  him 
wherever  he  might  turn,  ultimately  assumed 
for  him  a  spiritual  aspect ;  yet  he  found  on  his 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  95 

hands  a  large  mass  of  new  knowledge  which 
emotionally  he  was  unable  to  absorb.  Thus  he 
discovered  himself  placed  in  a  dilemma  from 
which  there  seemed  to  be  no  way  of  escape. 
Thus  he  found  himself  haunted,  in  the  phrase 
of  Wordsworth,  which  he  took  as  the  motto  for 
some  of  his  own  verses,  by  the  "  blank  misgiv- 
ings of  a  creature  moving  about  in  worlds  not 
realized."  He  could  not  continue  to  rest  his 
highest  feelings  upon  what  he  knew  to  be  illu- 
sions— that  was  out  of  the  question  ;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  could  not  find  in  the  body 
of  fresh  ideas  to  which  he  had  given  his  intel- 
lectual subscription,  the  firm  foundations  of  a 
large  and  serene  religious  faith.  To  embark, 
after  the  fashion  of  sundry  perplexed  philoso- 
phers in  these  later  times,  upon  a  system  of  all- 
round  compromise — to  throw  dust  into  his 
own  eyes  by  adoption  of  the  scholastic  formula 
that  a  principle  may  be  at  one  and  the  same 
time  true  in  science  and  false  in  theology — to 
adjust  the  claims  of  the  two  adverse  forces  of 
his  character  by  an  adroit  attempt  to  keep 
knowledge  and  the  religious  emotion  entirely 
apart  ; — all  this  was  alien  to  the  fine  integrity 
of  his  mind.  And  thus  he  remained  as  in  a 
strait  betwixt  two  ;  unable  to  turn  his  back 
upon  the  new  thought  of  his  age,  and  all  its 
far-reaching  speculative  consequences  ;  equally 
unable  either  to  repudiate  the  religious  needs  of 
his  nature,  or  to  bring  these  into  correspond- 
ence with  the  revelations  of  modern  science. 


g6  STUDIES  TN  INTERPRETATION. 

and  the  rapid  inarch  of  material  civilization. 
To  turn  back  was  impossible  ;  but  in  pushinc^ 
forward,  and  ever  forward,  how  much  after  all 
were  we  compelled  to  leave  behind  ! 

"  Say,  will  it,  when  our  hairs  are  gray, 
And  wi_ntry  suns  half  light  the  day. 
Which  cheering  hope  and  strengthening  trust 
Have  left,  departed,  turned  to  dust — 
Say,  will  it  soothe  lone  years  to  extract 
From  fitful  shows  with  sense  exact 
Their  sad  residuum,  small,  of  fact? 
Will  trembling  nerves  their  solace  find 
In  i)lain  conclusions  of  the  mind  ? 
Or  errant  fancies  fond,  that  still 
To  fretful  motions  prompt  the  will, 
Repose  upon  effect  and  cause. 
And  action  of  unvarying  laws, 
And  human  life's  familiar  doom, 
And  on  the  all-concluding  tomb? 


'fc> 


Or  were  it  to  our  kind  and  race, 
And  our  instructive  selves,  disgrace 
To  wander  then  once  more  in  you, 
Green  fields,  beneath  the  pleasant  blue 
To  dream  as  we  were  used  to  dream. 
And  let  things  be  whate'er  they  seem  ? 

O  feeble  shapes  of  beggars  gray 

That,  tottering  on  the  public  way, 

Die  out  in  doting  dim  decay. 

Is  it  to  you  when  all  is  past 

Our  would-be  wisdom  turns  at  last  ?  " ' 

'  Co/'J  Comfort  {Poems,  pp.  190-91). 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  9/ 

II. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  so-called  skepti- 
cal quality  of  Clough's  poetry — the  fitness  of 
the  phrase  we  shall  consider  directly— is  largely 
the  expression  of  a  fine,  honest,  and  richly- 
endowed  nature  thrown  out  of  hinge  within 
itself  by  contact  with  the  intellectual  con- 
ditions of  modern  life.  Too  far-sighted,  alert, 
and  sympathetic  to  ignore  the  metamorphosis 
which  the  forces  of  the  age  were  working  out 
everywhere  around  him,  he  was  at  the  same 
time  unable  for  the  present  to  find  in  the  new 
science  and  philosophy  those  religious  inspira- 
tions and  satisfactions  without  which  existence 
for  him  would  seem  barren  and  meaningless, 
and  thus  he  became  the  self-conscious  exponent 
of  conflicting  tendencies  which  he  saw  he  could 
not  harmonize.  It  now  remains  for  us  to  notice 
that  the  inbred  sensitiveness  of  his  character 
had  been  greatly  intensified  by  the  influences 
of  his  earlier  life,  at  school  and  the  university — 
influences  which  here  demand  a  moment's  at- 
tention. 

Born  in  1819,  Clough  was  sent,  soon  after  he 
had  entered  his  eleventh  year,  to  Rugby, 
then  under  the  head-mastership  of  the  famous 
Thomas  Arnold.  Here  he  remained  till  1836 — 
"  a  somewhat  grave  and  studious  boy,  not  with- 
out tastes  for  walking,  shooting,  and  sight-see- 
ing, but  with  little  capacity  for  play  and  for 
mixing  with  others,  and  with  more  of  varied  in- 


98  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

tellectual  interest  than  usual  with  boys."  '  The 
record  of  these  important  years  speaks  of  his 
later  achievements  in  football,  swimming,  and 
other  athletic  exercises,  and  of  the  high  respect, 
if  not  exactly  popularity,  enjoyed  by  him 
among  his  schoolmates  at  large.  But  along 
with  all  this,  it  lays  special  stress  on  the  weight 
of  moral  responsibility  which  the  youth  early 
felt  resting  upon  his  shoulders,  and  which 
naturally  grew  more  burdensome  as  time  passed 
on.  That  young  Clough,  with  his  innate  con- 
scientiousness and  high  strain  of  character, 
should  take  school-life  more  seriously  than  the 
rank  and  file  of  his  companions,  was  of  course 
inevitable  ;  but  there  were  two  special  circum- 
stances which,  at  that  period,  helped  in  no 
small  measure  to  strengthen  the  persistent 
bent  of  his  mind.  During  these  years  he  had 
no  home  of  his  own  to  go  to  in  the  holidays,  his 
family  being  still  resident  in  America ;  and  the 
consequent  lack  of  close  and  unrestrained  inter- 
course with  those  nearest  to  him  in  blood  and 
sympathy,  naturally  threw  him  back  overmuch 
upon  himself,  and  tended  in  this  way  to  de- 
velop the  habit  of  self-communion  to  which  he 
was  already  only  too  prone.  Beyond  this  it  is 
clear  that  he  responded  somewhat  too  readily 
for  his  subsequent  happiness  and  peace  of 
mind,  to  the  powerful  personal  influences  of 
Dr.  Arnold,  who,  first  among  modern   school- 

'  Memoir,  prefixed  to  Prose  Remains,  p.  10. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  99 

masters  to  deal  with  boys  as  morally  responsi- 
ble beings,  carried  his  method  to  the  extent  of 
making  the  already  over-sensitive  abnormally 
alive  to  the  difficulties  of  life  and  thestrenuous- 
nessof  duty.  To  one  naturally  so  highly-strung 
and  so  intensely  self-conscious  as  Clough,  the 
constant  strain  of  these  early  conditions  could 
not  but  give  rise  to  many  unfortunate  results. 

That  Clough  himself  afterwards  became 
aware  that,  whatever  might  be  said  of  it  on  gen- 
eral principles,  the  discipline  of  his  school-life 
had  been,  in  his  case  at  any  rate,  far  from 
ideally  good,  may  be  inferred  from  the  epilogue 
to  the  first  part  of  DipsycJuis.^  It  must  of 
course  be  remembered  that  the  man  does  not 
here  speak  in  his  own  person.  The  words  to  be 
quoted  in  evidence  are  put  by  him  into  the 
mouth  of  an  imaginary  uncle,  who  is  made  the 
spokesman  and  representative  of  the  older 
school  of  educationalists  and  thinkers.  But 
Clough  evidently  intended  us  to  see  how  certain 
things  would  work  when  regarded  from  the 
angle  of  vision  of  this  interesting  if  somewhat 
obstinate  old  person  ;  and  although  we  should 
certainly  not  be  justified  in  maintaining  that 
the  views  enunciated  by  him  are  meant  by  the 

'  Compare  the  following  passage  from  the  Memoir  :  ' '  That 
a  great  strain  and  sense  of  repression  were  upon  him  at  this 
time  is  clear  from  a  letter  written  after  the  interval  of  twenty 
years.  The  self-reliance  and  self-adaptation  which  most  men 
acquire  in  mature  life  were,  by  the  circumstances  of  his  family, 
forced  upon  him  in  his  early  y<^\\\.\'\"— Prose  Remains,  p.  ii. 


lOO         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

author  to  be  accepted  as  his  own,  we  can  and 
must  believe  that  they  are  here  set  down  for 
the  purpose  of  showing  the  new  generation  the 
kind  of  criticism  that  might  reasonably  be 
passed  upon  their  aims  and  methods  by  on- 
lookers of  an  entirely  different  type.  It  was  so 
much  Clough's  habit  to  go  all  round  every 
question  that  he  considered,  that  this  attempt 
to  set  forth  the  unfavorable  side  of  the  regime 
under  which  he  himself  had  been  brought  up, 
is  only  another  illustration  of  the  natural  out- 
working of  his  character. 

Here,  then,  is  part  of  the  conversation  be- 
tween uncle  and  nephew,  the  starting-point 
being  the  first  part  of  DipsycJius. 

"  I  don't  very  well  understand  what  it 's  all 
about,"  said  my  uncle.  "  I  won't  say  I  did  n't 
drop  into  a  doze  while  the  young  man  was 
drivelling  through  his  latter  soliloquies.  But 
there  was  a  great  deal  that  was  unmeaning, 
vague,  and  involved  ;  and  what  was  most  plain, 
was  least  decent  and  least  moral." 

"  Dear  sir,"  said  I,  "  says  the  proverb — 
'  needs  must  when  the  devil  drives  ' ;  and  if  the 
devil  is  to  speak " 

"Well,"  said  my  uncle,  "why  should  he? 
Nobody  asked  him.  Not  that  he  did  n't  say 
much  which,  if  only  it  had  n't  been  for  the 
way  he  said  it,  and  that  it  was  he  who  said  it, 
would  have  been  sensible  enough." 

"  But,  sir,"  said  I,  "  perhaps  he  was  n't  a  devil 


AR  TH UR  HUGH  CL 0 UGH.  I O I 

after  all.  That  's  the  beauty  of  the  poem  ; 
nobody  can  say.  You  see,  dear  sir,  the  thing 
which  it  is  attempted  to  represent  is  the  con- 
flict between  the  tender  conscience  and  the 
world.  Now,  the  over-tender  conscience  will, 
of  course,  exaggerate  the  wickedness  of  the 
world ;  and  the  Spirit  in  my  poem  may  be 
merely  the  hypothesis  or  subjective  imagina- 
tion formed " 

"  Oh,  for  goodness'  sake,  my  dear  boy,"  in- 
terrupted my  uncle,  "  don't  go  into  the  theory 
of  it.  If  you  're  wrong  in  it,  it  makes  bad 
worse  ;  if  you  're  right,  you  may  be  a  critic, 
but  you  can't  be  a  poet.  And  then  you  know 
very  well  I  don't  understand  all  those  new 
words.  But  as  for  that,  I  quite  agree  that 
consciences  are  much  too  tender  in  your  gen- 
eration— schoolboys'  consciences,  too  !  As  my 
old  friend  the  Canon  says  of  the  Westminster 
students,  '  They  're  all  so  pious.'  It  's  all  Ar- 
nold's doing ;  he  spoilt  the  public  schools." 

"  My  dear  uncle,"  said  I,  "  how  can  so  vener- 
able a  sexagenarian  utter  so  juvenile  a  paradox? 
How  often  have  I  not  heard  you  lament  the 
idleness  and  listlessness,  the  boorishness  and 
vulgar  tyranny,  the  brutish  manners  alike,  and 
minds " 

"  Ah  !  "  said  my  uncle,  "  I  may  have  fallen 
in  occasionally  with  the  talk  of  the  day  ;  but 
at  seventy  one  begins  to  see  clearer  into  the 
bottom  of  one's  mind.     In  middle  life  one  says 


102         STUDIES  IN  INTERPKETATIOX. 

SO  many  things  in  the  way  of  business.  Not 
that  I  mean  that  the  old  schools  were  perfect, 
any  more  than  we  old  boys  that  were  there.  But 
whatever  else  they  were  or  did,  they  certainly 
were  in  harmony  with  the  world,  and  they  cer- 
tainly did  not  disqualify  the  country's  youth 
for  after-life  and   the  country's  service." 

"  But,  my  dear  sir,  this  bringing  the  schools 
of  the  country  into  harmony  with  public  opin- 
ion is  exactly " 

"  Don't  interrupt  me  with  public  opinion, 
my  dear  nephew ;  you  '11  quote  me  a  leading 
article  next.  '  Young  men  must  be  young 
men,'  as  the  worthy  head  of  your  college  said 
to  me  touching  a  case  of  rustication.  *  My 
dear  sir,'  said  I,  '  I  only  wish  to  heaven  they 
would  be ;  but  as  for  my  own  nephews,  they 
seem  to  me  a  sort  of  hobbadi-hoy  cherub,  too 
big  to  be  innocent,  and  too  simple  for  any- 
thing else.  They  're  full  of  the  notion  of  the 
world  being  so  wicked,  and  of  their  taking  a 
higher  line,  as  they  call  it.  I  only  fear  they  '11 
never  take  any  line  at  all.'  What  is  the  true 
purpose  of  education  ?  Simply  to  make  plain 
to  the  young  understanding  the  laws  of  the 
life  they  will  have  to  enter.  For  example — 
that  lying  won't  do,  thieving  still  less;  that 
idleness  will  get  punished  ;  that  if  they  are 
cowards  the  whole  world  will  be  against  them  ; 
that  if  they  will  have  their  own  way,  they  must 
fight  for  it.     As  for  the  conscience,  mamma,  I 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  IO3 

take  it — such  as  mammas  are  now-a-days  at 
any  rate — has  probably  set  that  agoing  fast 
enough  already.  What  a  blessing  to  see  her 
good  little  child  come  back  a  brave  young 
devil-may-care !  " 

In  the  perusal  of  these  strictures  it  is  impos- 
sible not  to  realize  that  Clough  himself  came  to 
understand  how  much  there  was  to  be  said  in 
favor  of  the  more   robust    methods  of  educa- 
tion in  general  vogue  before  his  time,  and  how 
subtly  his  Rugby  experiences  had  tended  to 
develop  within  him  those  characteristics  of  his 
nature  which  he  afterwards  vainly  strove  to  re- 
press— excessive    susceptibility,   the    habit    of 
self-analysis,  and  a  conscientiousness  pushed  to 
a  morbid  degree  of  precision.     But  if  in  this 
respect  the  peculiar  conditions  of  his  school- 
days had  proved  to  be  detrimental,  still  more 
harmful  were  the  circumstances  in  which  he 
found  himself  placed  when,  at  the  age  of  eigh- 
teen, he  went  from  Rugby  to  Oxford.     Now 
came  indeed,  as  has  been  said,  what  was  "  essen- 
tially the  turning  point  of  his  life.'"     He  en- 
tered into  residence  at  Balliolat  the  time  when 
all  Oxford  was  shaken  to  its  foundations  by  the 
great  Tractarian  movement,  and  when  the  per- 
sonal power  and  influence  of  John  Henry  New- 
man were  at  their  height.     To  follow  the  history 
of  this  extraordinary  revival  of  mediaevalism  in 
religion  —  to  trace  phase  by  phase  the  changes 

'  Memoir  prefixed  to  Prose  Remains,  p.  13. 


104         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

and  chances  of  the  long  stern  battle  waged 
by  the  Puseyite  party  against  liberalism  and 
the  anti-dogmatic  principle,'  till  such  time  as 
with  the  secession  to  Rome  of  its  supreme 
leader,  the  aggressive  band  broke  up,  casting 
its  relics  "  like  driftwood  on  every  theological 
or  philosophical  shore  "  ^ — all  this,  of  course, 
would  take  us  outside  the  limits  of  our  present 
study.  The  history  of  the  movement  and  its  far- 
reaching  results  may  be  read  by  all  those  who 
care  for  the  investigation  of  the  religious  devel- 
opments of  our  time  in  the  clear  and  straight- 
forward narrative  of  events  furnished  by  Dean 
Church,  and  in  the  vivid  pages  of  Newman 's/^/t?- 
logia,  Mr.  Wilfred  Ward's  life  of  his  father,  and 
Mark  Pattison's  Memoirs.  Here  we  are  con- 
cerned simply  with  the  influences  exerted  by 
the  conditions  of  that  perilous  and  exciting 
time  upon  the  character  and  thought  of  Clough  ; 
and  it  will  readily  be  seen  that  such  a  man  as 
we  have  already  shown  him  to  be,  was  of  all 
men  the  least  qualified  to  breathe  with  impunity 
the  highly-charged  and  intoxicating  spiritual 
atmosphere  of  the  Oxford  of  those  momentous 
years.  While  the  imaginations  of  his  contem- 
poraries at  the  university  were  being  fired 
as  by  a  new  faith,  and  their  minds  riven  in 

'  "My  battle  was  with  liberalism  ;  by  liberalism  I  mean 
the  anti-dogmatic  principle  and  its  development." — Newman's 
Apologia,  p.  48. 

-  Goldwin  Smith,  Ox  ford  and  Iter  Colleges,  p.  82. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  I05 

doubt  by  conflicting  tendencies  of  almost  equal 
potency,  Clough,  carried  suddenly  from  the 
Rugby  of  Arnold  to  the  Oxford  of  Newman 
and  Ward,  with  the  latter  of  whom  he  was 
soon  linked  by  the  ties  of  intimate  friend- 
ship, was  naturally  drawn  down  into  the 
seething  current  of  speculation,  and  for  a 
time  nearly  swept  off  his  feet.  The  testimony 
of  Mr.  Ward  himself  to  the  disastrous  con- 
sequences of  the  state  of  things  thus  produced, 
is  too  valuable  not  to  be  reproduced  in  this 
connection.  "  What  was  before  all  things 
to  have  been  desired  for  him,"  Mr.  Ward  wrote 
many  years  after  the  events  to  which  he  refers, 
"  was  that  during  his  undergraduate  career  he 
should  have  given  himself  up  thoroughly  to  his 
classical  and  mathematical  studies,  and  kept 
himself  from  plunging  prematurely  into  the 
theological  controversies  then  so  rife  at  Oxford. 
Thus  he  would  have  been  saved  from  all  injury 
to  the  gradual  and  healthy  growth  of  his  mind 
and  character.  It  is  my  own  very  strong  im- 
pression that,  had  this  been  permitted,  his 
future  course  of  thought  and  speculation  would 
have  been  essentially  different  from  what  it 
was  in  fact.  Drawn,  as  it  were,  peremptorily, 
when  a  young  man  just  coming  up  to  college, 
into  a  decision  upon  questions  the  most  im- 
portant that  can  occupy  the  mind,  the  result 
was  not  surprising.  After  a  premature  forcing 
of  Clough's  mind,  there  came  a  reaction.     His 


I06         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

intellectual  perplexity  preyed  heavily  upon  his 
spirits,  and  grievously  interfered  with  his  stu- 
dies." ' 

That  Clough  himself  from  time  to  time  real- 
ized the  unfortunate  influence  of  his  Oxford 
surroundings,  is  made  sufficiently  clear  by  oc- 
casional utterances  in,  and  no  less  by  the 
general  tone  of,  his  letters  dating  from  the 
period  now  in  question.  "  I  truly  hope  to 
escape  the  vortex  of  philosophism  and  dis- 
cussion (whereof  Ward  is  the  centre),  as  it  is 
the  most  exhausting  exercise  in  the  world  ; 
and  I  assure  you  I  quite  makarise  you  at  Cam- 
bridge for  your  liberty  from  it."  ^  Thus  he 
could  write  to  his  friend,  J.  N.  Simpkinson,  in 
1839.  "  Oxford  is,  as  usual,  replete  with  New- 
manism  and  Ncwmanistic  gossip,  from  which  it 
is  one  blessing  for  you  that  you  are  preserved."  ^ 
So  runs  a  sentence  from  a  letter  to  J.  P.  Gell, 
then  in  Hobart  Town,  bearing  date  New  Year's 
Day,  1840.  But  it  was  one  thing  to  appreciate 
the  manifold  dangers  of  the  spiritual  struggle 
in  which  he  had  become  involved,  and  quite 
another  thing  to  turn  his  back  decisively  upon 
it.  And  so,  for  a  time,  "  Clough  was  carried 
away,  how  far  it  is  impossible  with  any  ap- 
proach to  certainty  to  say,  in  the  direction  of 
the  new  opinions.     He  himself  said  afterwards 

'  Quoted  in  Metnoir  {Prose  Remains,  p.  14). 
'  Prose  Remains,  p.  85. 
^/i>icl.,  p.  87. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  lO/ 

that  for  two  years  he  had  been  '  Hke  a  straw- 
drawn  up  the  draught  of  a  chimney.'  "  *  By 
and  by  the  reaction  came,  as  in  a  nature  hke 
his,  sooner  or  later,  it  was  sure  to  come  ;  and 
with  the  inevitable  results.  For  "  when  the 
torrent  had  subsided,  he  found  that  not  only 
had  it  swept  away  the  new  views  which  had 
been  presented  to  him  by  the  leaders  of  the 
Romanizing  movement,  but  also  that  it  had 
shaken  the  whole  foundations  of  his  early 
faith."  ' 

To  follow  from  this  crisis  onward,  the  sub- 
sequent course  of  his  religious  development 
would  be  unnecessary  for  our  present  purpose  ; ' 
nor  are  we  called  upon  in  this  connection  to 
enter  into  any  discussion  of  the  positive  results 
of  his  life-long  attempt  towards  the  formula- 
tion of  a  philosophic  creed.  The  above  analysis 
was  undertaken,  as  we  premised  at  the  outset, 
solely  with  the  view  of  setting  forth  as  clearly 
as  possible  certain   of   the  conditions  of   the 

'  Alemoir,  p.  15. 

''Ibid.,  p.  15. 

^  It  will  be  remembered  that,  after  going  through  many 
years  of  trouble  and  perplexity  about  the  matter,  Clough  at 
length,  in  1848,  found  it  imperatively  necessary  for  the  satis- 
faction of  his  religious  scruples,  and  for  his  general  peace  of 
mind,  to  relinquish  both  his  tutorship  and  his  fellowship  at  the 
university  :  thus  committing  himself  to  a  struggle  with  practical 
life  for  which,  as  the  sequel  showed,  he  was  very  inadequately 
prepared.  The  best  record  of  his  intellectual  life  during  this 
period  will  be  found  in  his  own  Oxford  X^XX^xi  {Prose  Remains, 
pp.  75-140). 


1 08         S7'  UDIE  S  IN  IN  TERPRE  TA  TION. 

man's  earlier  life,  and  of  pointing  out  the  natu- 
ral influence  of  these  upon  a  mind  predisposed 
from  the  start  to  the  malady  of  thought.  With 
his  theological  opinions,  as  such,  it  will  be 
understood,  we  have  now  no  special  concern.' 
It  is  his  attitude  of  mind,  temper,  intellectual 
outlook,  and  point  of  view,  that  we  want  to 
understand — a  matter  quite  apart  from,  and  far 
more  important  than  any  inquiry  into  the 
special  reasons  for  his  acceptance  or  rejection 
of  this  or  that  particular  tenet  or  hypothesis. 
It  is  obvious  that  a  man's  general  way  of  look- 
ing at  the  deeper  problems  of  life  and  conduct 
is  in  a  sense  a  matter  entirely  distinct  from  the 

'  The  fullest  and  clearest  statement  ever  made  by  Clough 
himself  of  what  may  be  described  as  the  foundation-principles 
of  his  religious  creed,  is  to  be  found  in  his  brief  N'olcs  on  the 
Religious  Tradition  {Prose  Remains,  pp.  415-21).  The 
manuscript  of  this  essay,  though  undated,  "  may  with  safety 
be  referred  to  the  last  period  of  his  life  "  (p.  415,  note).  The 
writer  simply  asserts  the  impossibility  of  holding  fast  to  the 
historic  records  of  Cliristianity,  and  takes  his  stand  firmly  upon 
intuition  and  the  spiritual  life  of  the  world  at  large.  Several 
important  passages  might  be  quoted  from  his  letters  in  further 
illustration  of  tliis  point  of  view,  as,  e.  g.  :  "I  cannot  feel 
sure  that  a  man  may  not  have  all  that  is  important  in  Christi- 
anity even  if  he  does  not  so  much  as  know  that  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth existed.  And  I  do  not  think  that  doubts  respecting  the 
facts  related  in  the  Gospels  need  give  us  much  trouble.  Be- 
lieving that  in  one  way  or  other  the  thing  is  of  God,  we  shall 
in  th::  end  know,  perhaps,  in  what  way  and  how  far  it  was  so. 
Trust  in  God's  justice  and  love,  and  belief  in  His  commands, 
as  written  in  our  conscience,  stand  unshaken,  though  Matthew, 
Mark,  Luke,  and  John,  or  even  St.  Paul,  were  to  fall"  {Lei- 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  lOQ 

organized  body  of  his  philosophic  thought 
about  them  ;  and  in  a  case  Hke  Clough's  it  is 
rather  the  question,  hoiv  he  envisaged  the 
world,  than  the  other  question,  ivhat  were  his 
intellectual  formulae  concerning  it,  that  is  the 
more  closely  allied  to  our  own  line  of  study 
and  interpretation. 

Yet,  before  we  leave  this  part  of  our  subject, 
we  must  turn  back  for  a  moment  to  a  point 
touched  upon  a  short  time  ago,  and  then  rele- 
gated to  another  place  for  discussion.  In  de- 
scribing the  more  salient  qualities  of  Clough's 
character  and  work,  we  almost  unconsciously 
make  use  of  the  term  "  skeptical."  But  how 
far  is  such  an  epithet,  after  all,  justifiable  ?  In 
what  sense,   and  with  what  limitations,  must 

ter  to  his  Sister,  May,  1847,  p.  113).  And  again:  "  I  cer- 
tainly am  free  to  tell  you  that  while  I  do  fully  think  that  the 
Christian  religion  is  the  best,  or  perhaps  the  only  really 
good  religion  that  has  appeared,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
to  how  it  appeared,  I  see  all  possible  doubt.  .  .  .  The 
whole  origin  of  Christianity  is  lost  in  obscurity  ;  if  the  facts 
are  to  be  believed,  it  is  simply  on  trust,  because  the  religion 
of  which  they  profess  to  be  the  origin  is  a  good  one.  But  its 
goodness  is  not  proved  by  them  ;  we  find  it  out  for  ourselves, 
by  the  help  of  good  people,  good  books,  etc. ,  etc.  Such  is 
my  present  feeling,  and  the  feeling  of  many.  .  .  .  I  mean  to 
wait,  but  at  present  that 's  what  I  think.  A  great  many  intel- 
ligent and  moral  people  think  Christianity  a  bad  religion.  I 
don't,  but  I  am  not  sure,  as  at  present  preached,  it  is  quite  the 
truth.  Meanwhile,  '  the  kingdom  of  heaven  cometh  not  of 
observation,'  but  '  is  in  ourselves.'  "  {Letter,  of  January,  1852, 
pp.  177-78.)  Compare  among  Clough's  poems,  especially, 
Epi-Strauss-iwn  and  The  N'ew  Sinai. 


I  lO         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

the  term  be  employed  if  it  is  to  serve  as  a  fair 
and  adequate  definition  ? 

It  will  help  us  to  set  ourselves  right  on  this 
matter  if,  in  the  first  place,  we  bear  in  mind 
what  we  have  just  above  said  about  the  need 
of  distinguishing  between  a  man's  creed,  be  it 
what  it  may,  and  the  spirit  in  which  such  creed 
is  accepted  by  him.  That  there  are  thus  many 
most  thorough-going  skeptics  within  the  pale 
of  the  orthodox  churches,  and  many  thinkers, 
classed  as  skeptics,  who  are  not  to  be  described 
as  such  save  by  tacit  consent  to  abandon  the 
true  meaning  of  our  language  altogether,  is  a 
proposition  demanding  no  proof.  For  our- 
selves, then,  when  we  speak  of  Clough's  skep- 
ticism, we  must  be  understood  to  refer  to  his 
temper,  not  to  his  system  of  thought — to  his 
general  relation  to  life,  and  not  to  his  special 
treatment  of  the  creeds  and  principles  of  any 
of  the  established  schools  of  theology.  It  was 
Clough's  habit  to  weigh  and  consider,  to  probe 
and  analyze,  to  investigate  and  reserve  judg- 
ment. His  "attitude  was  always  chiefly  that 
of  a  learner  "  '  ;  and  standing  face  to  face  with 
difficulties  he  would  not  shirk,  and  with  per- 
plexities which  seemed  to  become  only  the 
more  entangled  the  more  he  strove  to  unravel 
them,  he  was  content  to  wait  in  all  humbleness 
of  spirit  for  the  help  and  guidance  which  for 
the  time  being  were  withheld.     The  great  in- 

'  Memoir,  p.  i6. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  1 1 1 

stitutes  of  belief  handed  down  from  the  past 
came  fraught  for  his  judgment  with  no  ex- 
traneous authority ;  they  had  to  be  tried  anew 
at  every  point  in  the  light  of  clear  reason,  with 
all  the  aids  and  appliances  of  modern  knowl- 
edge, and  when  they  were  found  wanting  in 
any  particular,  not  all  the  sanctity  of  tradition, 
not  all  the  glory  of  historic  place  and  power, 
could  render  them  venerable  in  his  eyes.  The 
validity  of  faith,  the  foundations  of  hope,  all 
that  men  have  agreed  to  hold  most  sacred, 
were  for  him  open  questions,  to  be  searched, 
and  sifted,  and  tested  calmly,  rigorously,  re- 
morselessly. Accepting  no  dogma,  recognizing 
no  pontifical  power  in  the  domain  of  thought, 
he  thus  made  it  the  purpose  of  his  life  to  see 
things  for  himself ;  determined  to  follow  truth 
whithersoever  it  might  lead  him  ;  and  equally 
determined,  when  his  pathway  seemed  to  lie 
only  through  darkness  to  a  deeper  darkness 
beyond,  to  press  forward  still,  patient  and  un- 
dismayed. Let  the  light  come,  it  would  indeed 
be  welcome.  Let  the  day  tarry,  he  would  none 
the  less  bear  "  without  resentment  the  divine 
reserve."  ' 

It  is  thus  that  when  we  dwell  upon  Clough's 
skepticism,  we  refer  to  the  characteristic  tem- 
per of  his  mind — his  way  of  approaching  the 

'  This  fine  phrase  is  from  William  Watson's  poem,  To  Ed- 
ward Dowden,  on  Receiving  from  Him  a  Copy  of  the  Life  of 
Shelley. 


112         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

facts  of  existence,  and  the  spirit  in  which  he 
confronted  the  larger  issues  involved  in  them. 
All  this  of  itself  almost  implies  a  further  con- 
sideration which  must  never  be  lost  sight  of — 
that  of  the  positive  element  always  present  in 
Clough's  intellectual  life.  The  writer  of  the 
memoir  already  more  than  once  laid  under 
contribution,  is  particularly  earnest  in  insisting 
upon  the  fact  that  Clough's  skepticism  was  not 
of  the  fashionable,  dilettante,  indifferent,  or 
iconoclastic  type.  If  our  study  of  his  charac- 
ter has  been  at  all  sufficient,  there  is  no  need 
now  for  us  to  lay  emphasis  upon  this  point. 
Nevertheless,  to  avoid  all  possibility  of  misap- 
prehension, it  may  be  well  to  cite  a  portion  of 
what  his  biographer  tells  us  of  him  in  this 
connection  :  "  His  skepticism  was  of  no  mere 
negative  quality — not  a  mere  rejection  of  tra- 
dition and  denial  of  authority,  but  was  the  ex- 
pression of  a  pure  reverence  for  the  inner  light 
of  the  spirit,  and  of  entire  submission  to  its 
guidance.  It  was  the  loyalty  to  truth  as  the 
supreme  good  of  the  intellect,  and  as  the  only 
sure  foundation  of  moral  character.  .  .  . 
Such  skepticism — skepticism  which  consists  in 
reverent  waiting  for  light  not  yet  given,  in  re- 
spect for  the  truth  so  absolute,  that  nothing 
doubtful  can  be  accepted  as  truth  because  it  is 
pleasant  to  the  soul — was  his  ...  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  .  .  .  But  the  skepticism 
which  assumes  a  negative  position  from  intel- 


A  R  THUR  H  UGH  CL  O  UGH.  1 1 3 

lectual  pleasure  in  destructive  arguments,  which 
does  not  feel  the  want  of  spiritual  support,  or 
realize  the  existence  of  spiritual  truth,  which 
mocks  at  the  grief  of  others,  and  refuses  to 
accept  their  honest  experiences  as  real,  was 
never  his.  He  never  denied  the  reality  of 
much  that  he  himself  could  not  use  as  spiritual 
nutriment.  He  believed  that  God  spoke  dif- 
ferently to  different  ages  and  to  different 
minds.'  Not,  therefore,  could  he  lay  aside  his 
own  duty  of  seeking  and  waiting.  Through 
good  report  and  through  evil  report,  this  he 
felt  to  be  his  own  personal  duty,  and  from  it 
he  never  flinched." '^ 


III. 


Such  being  the  man,  his  temper,  his  intellec- 
tual surroundings,  we  pass  on  to  a  brief  investiga- 
tion of  some  of  the  more  salient  characteristics 
of  his  poetic  production  ;  merely  premising  that 
Clough's  verse,  as  we  should  be  led  to  expect 
from  what  we  have  learned  of  the  personality  of 
the  writer,  will  everywhere  be  found  to  present 
itself  to  the  student  as  a  singularly  transparent 
medium  of  self-revelation.  It  belongs  througfh- 
out  to  the  poetry  that  we  classify  as  intellectual, 
rather  than   passionate   or  imaginative  ;  bears 

'  Compare  Clough's  own  statement  in  regard  to  this  in  Notes 

on  the  Religious  Tradition  {Prose  Remains,  pp.  418-20). 

^Memoir,  pp.  15-17. 
8 


114         ^  TUDIES  IN  INTER  PRE  TA  TION. 

along  with  it  upon  its  simplest  phrases  the 
heaviest  burden  of  thought  and  speculation, 
and  nowhere  seeks  those  lighter  graces  of  the 
muse  which  are  best  calculated  to  appeal  to 
popular  taste.  The  larger  portion  of  it  is 
purely  subjective  and  personal ;  and  the  re- 
maining parts — even  the  stories  of  the  unfin- 
ished Mari  Magno—SiXQ  intended  as  serious 
contributions  towards  the  study  of  what  the 
writer  always  regarded  as  life's  most  important 
themes.  Clough  himself  had  little  or  no  in- 
terest in  poetry  "  which  did  not  touch  some 
deep  question,  some  vital  feeling  in  human 
nature  "  '  ;  and  his  own  verse  is  likeiy  to  prove 
acceptable  only  to  readers  who,  with  him, 
would  habitually  turn  to  the  poet,  not  for 
splendor  of  language,  opulence  of  imagery, 
felicity  of  fancy,  or  charm  of  style,  but  for 
earnest  criticism  of  the  ever-encroaching  spir- 
itual and  social  problems  of  the  time. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  it  may  be  pointed  out 
in  passing  that  Clough's  poetry  as  a  whole  is 
naturally  marked  by  a  persistent  sense  of  im- 
permanence,  instability,  and  transition — by  the 
forward-reaching  spirit  of  a  man  who,  himself 
falling  upon  an  epoch  of  upheaval,  experiment, 
and  widespread  intellectual  unrest,  stands  tip- 
toe to  catch  if  may  be  some  hint  of  unrealized 
things.  It  is  a  poetry  of  anticipation,  domi- 
nated throughout. by  the  presentiment  of  the 

'  Memoir,  p.  42. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOU  GIL  I  15 

morrow — the  keen  foretaste  of  impending  and 
inevitable  change.  That  which  we  call  the  past 
was  the  living  present  once  ;  that  which  we  call 
the  present  will  be  the  dead  past  by  and  by. 
To-day  and  the  things  of  to-day  will  not,  and 
cannot,  abide  with  us ;  and  the  new  morning 
which,  willingly  or  unwillingly,  we  must  all  go 
forth  to  meet,  will  bring  with  it  many  things 
which  must  needs  seem  to  us  strange,  and  crude, 
and  perchance  even  repugnant.  ''  Every  new  age 
has  something  new  in  it — takes  up  p.  new  posi- 
tion." '  The  older  order  of  the  world  is  break- 
ing down  under  the  stress  of  fresh  thoughts, 
ideals,  necessities  ;  and  out  of  the  confusion 
of  actual  life,  it  is  difficult,  perhaps  impossi- 
ble, even  to  guess  as  yet  what  new  world-order, 
if  any,  is  likely  to  arise.  One  thing  at  least  is 
certain.  The  current  which  bears  us  so  rapidly 
forward  can  be  turned  aside  by  no  man's 
power;  and  for  the  large  heart  and  brain  of 
a  poet  like  Clough  there  can  therefore  be  no 
fact  more  momentous  than  this  fact  of  change 
— no  question  more  important  than  the  ques- 
tion what  this  change  will  ultimately  be  found 
to  mean. 

The  note  of  fluctuation,  the  attitude  of 
eager  watchfulness,  the  mood  of  inquiry,  thus 
become  characteristics  of  the  great  body  of 
Clough's  work  in  verse.  To  one  poem  alone, 
however,  shall  we  here  refer  in  illustration — to 

'  Letters  of  Parepidemus  i^Prose  Remains,  p.  382). 


Il6         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION^. 

a  poem  in  which  for  the  rest  these  quahtics  are 
perhaps  most  distinctly  shown.  Reprinted  in 
his  collected  poems  the  verses  bear  the  signifi- 
cant Heracleitean  motto — navra  psi-  ovdiv 
fxivei  ,•  while  in  the  Letters  of  Parepidenms, 
in  which  they  were  originally  issued,  they 
were  prefaced  by  an  interesting  paragraph,  a 
few  sentences  of  which  we  here  quote  as  the 
best  commentary  available  upon  the  poem 
itself. 

"  We  submit  ourselves  for  instruction  to 
teachers,  and  they  teach  us  (or  is  it  our  awk- 
wardness that  we  learn  from  them  ?)  their  faults 
and  mistakes.  Each  new  age  and  each  new 
year  has  its  new  direction  ;  and  we  go  to  the 
well-informed  of  the  season  before  ours,  to  be 
put  by  them  in  the  direction  which,  because 
right  for  their  time,  is  therefore  not  quite  right 
for  ours."  ' 

Thereupon  follow  the  verses,  which,  however, 
we  here  reproduce  in  the  somewhat  altered 
form  in  which  they  are  to  be  found  in  the 
collected  poems  : 

"  Upon  the  water,  in  the  boat, 
I  sit  and  sketch  as  down  I  float  ; 
The  stream  is  wide,  the  view  is  fair, 
I  sketch  it  looking  backward  there. 

"  The  stream  is  strong,  and  as  I  sit 
And  view  the  i)icture  that  wc  quit, 
'  Prose  Remains,  p.  383. 


AR  THUR  HUG  IT  CLOUGH.  1 1  / 

It  flows  and  flows,  and  bears  the  boat, 
And  I  sit  sketching  as  we  float. 

"  Each  pointed  height,  each  wavy  line, 
To  new  and  other  forms  combine  ; 
Proportions  vary,  colors  fade. 
And  all  the  landscape  is  remade. 

"  Depicted  neither  far  nor  near. 
And  larger  there  and  smaller  here, 
And  varying  down  from  old  to  new, 
E'en  I  can  hardly  think  it  true. 

"  Yet  still  I  look,  and  still  I  sit. 
Adjusting,  shaping,  altering  it  ; 
And  still  the  current  bears  the  boat 
And  me,  still  sketching  as  I  float. 

"  Still  as  I  sit,  with  something  new 
The  foreground  intercepts  the  view  ; 
Even  the  distant  mountain  range 
From  the  first  moment  suffers  change." 

But  while  Clough's  verse  everywhere  shows 
the  man's  resolute  facing  of  the  facts  of  life, 
and  his  intense  realization  of  the  changing 
order  of  the  modern  world,  it  reveals  at  the 
same  time  the  inevitable  fluctuations  of  his 
thought  and  feeling  as  he  speculates  upon  the 
various  spiritual  problems  persistently  forced 
upon  the  attention  of  his  age.  His  poetry  is 
the  poetry  of  moods — moods  of  comparative 
hopefulness,  moods  of  weariness  and  despair, 


Il8         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

moods  of  mere  inquiry  and  deliberate  reserve. 
To  the  superficial  reader,  turning  over  the  pages 
of  his  collected  works,  there  might  even  seem 
to  be  the  strangest  inconsistencies  in  the  utter- 
ances of  some  of  his  shorter  poems ;  for  his 
sensitive  nature  catches  up  and  repeats,  though 
always  in  tempered  tones,  now  the  sad  wail  of 
some  who  mourn  over  the  rapid  dissolution  of 
the  world's  great  heritage  of  belief,  and  now 
again  the  glad  shout  of  others  who,  boldly  and 
trustfully,  press  forward  to  meet  the  coming 
day.  But  the  wail  and  the  shout — the  song  of 
sorrow  and  the  song  of  promise — alike  belong 
to  the  man  himself,  and,  far  from  being  dis- 
cordant or  incompatible,  are  in  their  own  ways 
equally  expressive  of  his  relation  to  the  great 
issues  of  the  time.  If  there  were  seasons  in 
which  he  could  not  but  realize  that  hopes  may 
be  dupes,  there  were  other  occasions  when  he 
felt  just  as  strongly  that  fears  might  be  liars  ' ; 
and  the  full  revelation  of  each  of  these  alter- 
nating moods  is  to  be  found  in  his  verse.  His 
intellectual  life  was  made  up  of  one  long 
struggle  for  settled  conviction  and  the  adjust- 
ment of  emotion  to  knowledge  ;  and  his  poems 
present  us  with  the  frank  personal  record  of  all 
the  vacillation  of  mind,  the  hesitation,  uncer- 
tainty, and  self-torture,  the  swing  of  feeling 
from  hopefulness  to  despondency  and  from  de- 
spondency back  to  hopefulness,  which  such  a 
'  See  his  poem,  Say  Not  the  Struggle  Nought  Availeth. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  I  I9 

struggle  brought  with  it,  to  a  man  of  Clough's 
introspective  habit,  as  one  of  its  inevitable 
results. 

The  contrasted  poems  on  Easter  Day,  written 
at  Naples  in  1849,  iriay  be  taken  to  exhibit  in 
the  most  vivid  way  the  author's  quick  and 
delicate  responsiveness  to  the  evangel  of  faith 
and  hope  on  the  one  hand  and  to  that  of  doubt 
and  darkness  upon  the  other.  Passing  through 
"  the  great  sinful  streets  "  of  the  Italian  city, 
the  burden  of  a  strange  Easter  message  comes 
borne  in  upon  him — "  Christ  is  not  risen." 

"  Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust  ; 
As  of  the  unjust,  also  of  the  just — 

Yea,  of  tliat  Just  One,  too  ! 
This  is  the  one  sad  Gospel  that  is  true — 
Christ  is  not  risen  ! 

"  Eat,  drink,  and  play,  and  think  that  this  is  bliss  : 
There  is  no  heaven  but  this  ; 

There  is  no  hell 
Save  earth  which  serves  the  purpose  doubly  well, 

Seeing  it  visits  still 
With  equalest  apportionment  of  ill 
Both  good  and  bad  alike,  and  brings  to  one  same 
dust 

The  unjust  and  the  just 

With  Christ,  who  is  not  risen. 

"  Eat,  drink,  and  die,  for  we  are  souls  bereaved  : 
Of  all  the  creatures  under  heaven's  wide  cope 


I20        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION: 

We  are  most  hopeless,  who  had  once  most  hope, 
And  most  beliefless  that  had  most  believed. 
Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust  ; 
As  of  the  unjust,  also  of  the  just — 

Yea,  of  that  Just  One  too  ! 
It  is  the  one  sad  Gospel  that  is  true — 
Christ  is  not  risen  !  " 

A  mournful  song,  indeed  for  Easter  morning 
— a  song  which  interprets  more  impersonally 
perhaps  than  most  of  Clough's  poems  the 
world's  sense  of  abject  desolation  and  despair 
as  men  find  themselves  suddenly  astray  in  a 
wilderness  out  of  which  light  and  meaning  have 
vanished  forever,  with  the  creeds  that  can  never 
be  vitalized  again. 

"  And  ye,  ye  ministers  and  stewards  of  a  Word 
Which  ye  would  preach,  because  another  heard — 
Ye  worshippers  of  that  ye  do  not  know, 
Take  these  things  hence  and  go  : — 
He  is  not  risen  !  " 

But  the  mood  changes  ;  and  the  poet,  after 
thus  filling  his  song  with  all  the  hopelessness 
that  comes  with  the  realization  of  what  has 
been  lost  to  human  life,  steps  before  us  again 
as  the  exponent  of  the  high  courage  that  may 
still  be  inspired  by  thought  of  the  great  reali- 
ties  that  still  remain. 

"  But  in  a  later  hour  I  sat  and  heard 

Another  voice  that  spake — another  graver  word. 


ARTHUR  H UGH  CL O UGH.  1 2 1 

Weep  not,  it  bade,  whatever  hath  been  said, 
Though  He  be  dead,  He  is  not  dead. 

In  the  true  creed 

He  is  yet  risen  indeed  ; 
Christ  is  yet  risen. 

•  ■••••• 

"  Sit  if  ye  will,  sit  down  upon  the  ground. 
Yet  not  to  weep  and  wail,  but  calmly  look  around. 
Whate'er  befell. 
Earth  is  not  hell  ; 
Now,  too,  as  when  it  first  began. 
Life  is  yet  life,  and  man  is  man. 
For  all  that  breathe  beneath  the  heaven's  high  cope, 
Joy  with  grief  mixes,  with  despondence  hope. 
Hope  concjuers  cowardice,  joy  grief  : 
Or  at  least,  faith  unbelief. 
Though  dead,  not  dead  ; 
Not  gone,  though  fled  ; 
Not  lost,  though  vanished. 
In  the  great  Gospel  and  true  creed, 
He  is  yet  risen  indeed  ; 
Christ  is  yet  risen." 

Now,  it  is  interesting  to  observe  in  this  con- 
nection that  as  so  many  of  Clough's  shorter 
poems  are  expressive  of  varying  personal 
moods,  so  in  like  manner  the  two  most  per- 
manently interesting  of  his  three  longer  poems 
are  both  extremely  elaborate  presentations 
of  natures  out  of  balance  within  themselves  ; 
while  in  the  third,  The  Bothie  of  Tober-na- 
Vitolich,  the  element  of  inner  warfare,  though 


122         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

less  prominent,  still  plays  an  important  part. 
The  analysis  of  character  disturbed  by  spiritual 
conflict  had  a  natural  fascination  for  him  ;  and 
in  tracing  out  the  details  of  the  struggle,  in 
dissecting  the  motives  and  counter-motives  in- 
volved, in  reaching  down  into  the  deep  recesses 
of  troubled  minds,  and  in  weighing  circum- 
stance against  circumstance  and  feeling  against 
feeling,  he  found  all  the  keen  interest  inevitably 
arising  from  the  fact  that  he  was  working  artis- 
tically upon  material  largely  drawn  from  the 
experiences  of  his  own  life.  It  is  not,  of  course, 
intended  to  imply  that  such  characters  as 
Dipsychus  and  Claude  are  for  a  moment  to  be 
regarded  simply  as  Clough  himself  masquerad- 
ing in  quasi-dramatic  disguises.  In  the  case  of 
the  latter  at  all  events  such  a  proposition  would 
be  clearly  untenable.  Yet  in  each  of  these 
subtly  depicted  personalities  there  is  much, 
very  much,  that  is  manifestly  auto-psycho- 
graphical  ;  much  that  reminds  us,  as  we  study 
the  play  of  antagonistic  forces  in  their  prob- 
lematical natures,  that  we  are  very  near  indeed 
to  the  heart  and  brain  of  the  man  who  gave 
them  life. 

So  interesting  are  the  two  characters  now 
referred  to — Dipsychus,  in  the  poem  of  that 
name,  and  Claude,  in  the  Amours  de  Voyage — 
as  exhibiting  each  in  his  own  way  Clough's 
intense  sympathy  with  perplexed  and  intro- 
spective natures,  and  the  extraordinary  under- 


A  A-  T//[//y:  HUGH  CLO  UGH.  1 2 3 

standing  which  such  sympathy  gave  him  of  the 
minutest  details  of  their  spiritual  strife,  that 
we  shall  be  justified  in  pausing  for  a  moment 
to  examine  a  little  more  particularly  the  rela- 
tion of  these  dramatic  characters  to  the  poet's 
own  genius  and  personal  contact  with  life. 

The  first-named  of  these  poems,  DipsycJins, 
may  not  inaptly  be  described  as  a  kind  of 
latter-day  Faust.  It  is  based  upon  a  question 
already  raised  by  the  writer  in  some  verses  on 
The  Music  of  tJie  Wor'ld  and  of  the  Soul.  "Are 
there  not,  then,  two  musics  unto  men?"  he 
had  asked  in  this  earlier  production ; — the 
coarse  and  overpowering  din  of  daily  toil  and 
sordid  striving;  and  the  low,  sweet  melody  of 
the  spiritual  life.  It  is  this  question  that  the 
later  DipsycJius  takes  as  its  central  theme  ;  the 
purpose  of  the  poem  being  (as  we  have  seen 
the  author  himself  state  it)  to  present  a  fully 
elaborated  study  of  idealism  in  its  conflict  with 
the  Power  of  the  world,'  of  which  it  naturally 

'  Di.     Tell  me  thy  name,  now  it  is  over. 

Spirit.  Oh ! 

Why  Mephistophiles,  you  know — 
At  least  you  've  lately  called  me  so  ; 
Belial  it  was  some  clays  ago. 
But  take  your  pick  ;  I  've  got  a  score — 
Never  a  royal  baby  more. 
For  a  brass  plate  upon  a  door 
What  think  you  of  Cosmocrator  ? 

Di.     Tov'i  Ko'jfxoHpdropa'i  rov  aioovoi  rovrov. 
And  that  you  are  indeed,  T  do  not  doubt  you. 


124        STUDIES  IN  INTERrRETATION. 

exaggerates  the  evil  if  not  the  potency.  Dip- 
sychus  himself  is,  as  the  name  implies,  a  "  double 
self  "  ' — a  being  tortured  by  the  conflict  of 
adverse  purposes,  without  force  of  will  suffi- 
cient to  decide  once  for  all  upon  the  alterna- 
tive offered  to  him,  yet  miserable  by  reason  of 
his  own  weakness  and  vacillation.  He  is  mor- 
bidly sensitive  and  introspective ;  intensely 
alive  to  every  influence  from  without,  and  to 
every  ebb  and  flow  of  thought  and  emotion 
within  ;  a  highly-strung  nature  cherishing 
dreams  of  transcendent  splendor  and  prom- 
ise, and  met  everywhere  by  realities  which  at 
once  seem  destructive  of  his  finest  hopes  and 
his  noblest  aspirations.  The  only  other  char- 
acter in  the  first  division  of  the  poem  is  the 
Mephistophelian  spirit  by  whom  Dipsychus  is 
constantly  followed,  and  with  whom  he  dis- 
cusses at  great  length  the  "  vext  conundrums" 
of  existence,  as  he  finds  them  facing  him,  turn 
wheresoever  he  will.  This  spirit  objectifies 
the  anti-idealistic  tendencies  in  the  young 
man's  speculative  nature.  It  is  his  business  to 
present  all  the  lower  aspects  and  ambitions  of 
life  in   their  most  picturesque  and  attractive 

Sp.      Ephesians,  ain't  it  ?  near  the  end 

You  've  dropt  a  word  to  spare  your  friend. 
What  follows,  too,  in  application 
Would  be  absurd  exaggeration. 

Di.     The  Power  of  this  world  !    Hateful  unto  God. 

Dipsychus^  i'art  ii.,  Scene  g. 
1  Part  ii..  Scene  5. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  I  25 

forms,  to  soften  down  the  sharper  edges  of 
social  injustice  and  wrongdoing,  to  exhibit  the 
folly  of  visionary  hopes  and  pietistic  cravings, 
and  to  set  forth  in  pleasing  colors  the  loose, 
easy-going  philosophy  of  existence  of  the 
honwie  nioycn  scnsiiel — the  average,  every-day 
mortal  who  takes  things  as  he  finds  them,  and 
bothers  himself  but  little  about  the  finer  ques- 
tions cf  right  and  wrong.  The  voice  of  the 
world,  of  conventionality,  of  respectability,  is 
heard  in  all  his  utterances  ;  his  highest  standard 
is  expediency,  his  ultimate  criterion,  success. 
He  twits  Dipsychus  upon  his  indecision  of 
character  ;  laughs  in  a  perfectly  good-tempered 
way  at  all  his  scruples  and  difificulties ;  caps  his 
heroics  with  jingling  verses  of  flippant  humor, 
light  cynicism,  or  delicate  burlesque  ;  and  alto- 
gether behaves  so  much  as  a  gentlemanly  and 
quite  unprincipled  man  of  the  world,  that  we 
are  soon  made  to  feel  that  of  all  conceivable 
companions  for  an  over-speculative  and  inex- 
perienced young  fellow  of  the  type  of  Dipsy- 
chus, such  an  one  is,  beyond  discussion,  the 
most  dangerous.  At  length  the  unequal  con- 
flict ends  ;  idealism  inch  by  inch  gives  ground, 
and  finally  loses  the  day.  "  Welcome,  O  world, 
henceforth,  and  farewell  dreams  !  " — with  such 
words,  Dipsychus  yields  allegiance  to  his  new 
master.  With  what  result  ?  The  second  di- 
vision of  the  poem,  in  which  the  soul's  tragedy 
would  have  been  followed  to  its  completion,  is 


126        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

unfortunately  represented  only  by  the  merest 
fragment ;  and  thus  such  a  question  can  be 
answered  only  by  way  of  guess.  Yet  there  can 
be  but  little  doubt  as  to  the  general  direction 
that  the  story  would  have  taken.  The  first 
scene  of  the  sequel  shows  us  Dipsychus,  many 
years  later,  a  successful,  famous,  and  wealthy 
man,  and  into  the  privacy  of  his  study  intrudes 
a  woman  whom  long  ago  he  had  wronged. 
She  congratulates  him  upon  his  high  place  and 
noble  name,  upon  his  domestic  comfort,  his 
power  and  prosperity  ;  and  he  replies : 

"  Am  I  not  rather 
The  slave  and  servant  of  the  wretched  world, 
Liveried  and  finely  dressed — yet  all  the  same 
A  menial  and  a  lacquey  seeking  place 
For  hire,  and  for  his  hire's  sake  doing  work  ? " 

Judged  by  the  canon  of  true  happiness,  the 
man's  solution  of  life's  problem,  for  all  its 
imposing  superficial  results,  can  only  be 
pronounced  a  failure  after  all. 

Now  in  reading  such  a  poem  as  this,  it  is  im- 
possible for  us  not  to  recognize  the  partial 
identification  of  the  poet  with  his  character. 
Dipsychus  docs  not  exhibit  the  remorseless  self- 
effacement,  the  determined  objectivity,  which 
are  the  prime  conditions  of  true  dramatic 
creation.  The  personal  note  is  heard  in  it 
throughout.  In  many  of  the  passages  put  into 
the  mouth  of  the  young  idealist  we  detect  the 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  12/ 

accent  of  the  writer's  voice,  while  the  man's 
general  attitude  towards  the  world  and  its 
problems  is  unmistakably  Clough's  own/  This 
of  course  must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that 
Clough  intended  DipsycJiiis  to  stand  as  a 
transcript  from  his  own  inner  life — a  mere 
reproduction  of  his  personal  soul-drama,  of 
which,  in  Amiel's  phrase,  he  had  been  so  keen- 
sighted  a  spectator.  But  careful  study  of  the 
poem  makes  it  sufficiently  clear  that  though 
Dipsychus  is  not  to  be  hastily  accepted  as  an 
elaborate  piece  of  self-portraiture,  his  character 
is  none  the  less  made  up  of  elements  which 
Clough  had  had  every  reason  to  find  danger- 
ously prominent  in  his  own  intellectual  consti- 
tution. In  Dipsychus,  in  other  words,  it  would 
seem  that  we  have  the  exaggeration  of  the 
poet's  introspective  and  skeptical  tendencies, 
while  his  healthy  sense  of  practical  life,  which 
as  we  shall  presently  see,  gave  ballast  to  his 
thought,  is  of  set  purpose  eliminated  almost  en- 
tirely.    The  central  meaning  of  the  poem  thus 

'  It  may  be  pointed  out  as  a  matter  of  detail  that  Clough 
made  no  attempt  to  obscure  the  personal  nature  of  much  of 
this  poem.  In  the  opening  scene,  for  instance,  he  makes 
Dipsychus  refer  to  the  first  verses  on  Easter  Day  as  his  own 
production  ;  while  in  Part  ii.,  Scene  2,  some  lines  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Dipsychus  are  reproduced  almost  verbatim  from 
the  close  of  the  poem  The  Hidden  Love.  Such  bitter  verses 
as  Duty,  In  the  Great  Metropolis,  and  The  Latest  Decalogue, 
remind  us  at  once  of  some  of  the  utterances  of  the  World- 
spirit. 


128         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

becomes  manifest.  Clough  was  too  profound 
a  student  of  his  own  life  and  character  not  to 
be  fully  alive  to  the  dangers  Avhich  threaten  a 
nature  such  as  his.  He  knew  perfectly  well 
that  the  habit  of  self-analysis  may  easily  be 
pushed  to  morbid  extremes  ;  that  healthy  ex- 
istence is  only  possible  when  the  processes  of 
mental  as  well  as  o-f  physical  growth  are  in  a 
large  measure  left  to  take  care  of  themselves  ; 
and  that  systematic  mistrust  and  suspense  of 
judgment  tend  in  the  upshot  to  bring  about  in- 
firmity of  purpose  and  a  total  collapse  of  the 
faith  which  is  needed  to  furnish  any  working 
hypothesis  for  life.  Dipsychus  may  therefore 
be  described  as  a  study  made  by  Clough  from 
himself,  in  which,  however,  one  aspect  of  his 
character  is  thrown  into  exaggerated  relief  for 
the  purpose  of  emphasizing  its  logical  tendency 
towards  self-stultification  and  spiritual  bank- 
ruptcy. 

That  the  interpretation  here  given  to  the 
poem  is  in  the  main  the  correct  one,  is  shown 
by  the  comments  contained  in  the  Epilogue, 
already  cited.  Here  special  stress  is  laid  upon 
the  weakness  of  will  superinduced  by  modern 
methods  of  education,  and  the  introspective 
habit  of  mind  to  which  these  give  rise,  and 
upon  the  liability  of  "  the  over-tender  con- 
science "  to  "  exaggerate  the  wickedness  of  the 
world."  Indecision  of  character,  lack  of 
robustness     and    actuality,    intellectual    fasti- 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  I  29 

diousncss  with  all  its  attendant  evils — these 
are  the  qualities  brought  out  as  causes  of  the 
downfall  of  the  young  idealist's  fine-cut  imper- 
fectly-poised nature.  Elsewhere,  speaking  now 
distinctly  for  himself,  Clough  returns  to  the 
same  theme  in  these  well  weighed  sentences: 
"  Between  the  extremes  of  ascetic  and  timid 
self-culture,  and  of  unquestioning,  unhesitating 
confidence,  we  may  consent  to  see  and  tolerate 
every  kind  and  gradation  of  intermixture. 
Nevertheless,  upon  the  whole,  for  the  present 
age,  the  lessons  of  reflectiveness  and  the  habits 
of  caution  do  not  appear  to  be  more  needful 
or  appropriate  than  exhortations  to  steady 
courage,  and  calls  to  action.  There  is  some- 
thing certainly  of  an  over-educated  weakness  of 
purpose  in  Western  Europe — not  in  Germany 
only,  or  in  France,  but  also  in  more  busy  Eng- 
land. There  is  a  disposition  to  press  too  far 
the  finer  and  subtler  intellectual  and  moral  sus- 
ceptibilities ;  to  insist  upon  following  out,  as 
they  say,  to  their  logical  consequences,  the 
notices  of  some  organ  of  the  spiritual  nature  ; 
a  proceeding  which  perhaps  is  hardly  more 
sensible  in  the  grown  man  than  it  would 
be  in  the  infant  to  refuse  to  correct  the  sen- 
sations of  sight  by  those  of  the  touch.  Upon 
the  whole,  we  are  disposed  to  follow  out,  if 
we  must  follow  out  at  all,  the  analogy  of 
the  bodily  senses ;  we  are  inclined  to  accept 
rather  than  investigate  ;  and  to  put  our  con- 


130        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

fidence  less  in  arithmetic  and  antinomies  than 

in 

"  A  few  strong  instincts  and  a  few  plain  rales."  ' 

Now,  all  that  we  have  said,  by  way  of  in- 
terpretation, about  DipsycJms,  will  apply  with 
even  greater  force  to  the  second  of  the  two 
poems  now  in  question — xSxo.  Amours  de  Voyage ; 
a  more  interesting  work  in  itself,  and  one  show- 
ing in  its  general  structure  a  finer  quality  of  art. 
If  we  have  been  justified  in  describing  Dipsy- 
cJiiis  as  a  kind  of  latter-day  Faust,  we  may  aptly 
call  Claude,  the  principal  figure  of  the  Amours, 
a  modern  Hamlet,  cast  in  a  quite  unheroic 
mould,  and  confronted  by  a  life-problem  of  the 
common  and  every-day  order.  Once  more, 
studying  his  dramatic  character  from  what  he 
has  found  actual  or  potential,  developed  or 
latent  within  himself,  Clough  undertakes  to 
draw  for  us  just  such  a  young  man  as  he  con- 
ceives might  be  taken  as  a  typical  product  of 
our  age  of  over-culture,  over-refinement,  over- 
speculation.  Claude  is  a  pleasant,  high-minded, 
well-read  fellow,  with  large  interests  and  fine 
enthusiasms,  and  many  personal  qualities  cal- 
culated to  arouse  our  admiration  ;  but  his  will- 
power is  almost  paralyzed  by  his  persistent 
skepticism.  His  whole  life  is  "sicklied  o'er 
with  the  pale  cast  of  thought."     To  try  every 

'  Review  of  Some  Poems  by  Alexander  Smith  and  Matthew 
Arnold  {Prose  Remains,  pp.   372-73). 


AR  THUR  HUGH  CLO  UGH.  1 3 1 

circumstance,  to  probe  and  reprobe  every  feel- 
ing, to  go  behind  every  judgment ;  such  is  the 
habit  of  his  mind.  He  will  take  no  intuition 
upon  its  own  validity,  while  as  for  his  motives, 
he  weighs  them  so  carefully  and  analyzes  them 
so  keenly,  that  one  by  one  they  evaporate 
"  and  lose  the  name  of  action."  His  knowledge 
is  wide  and  his  philosophic  eclecticism  un- 
bounded. His  only  solution  for  any  problem 
is  to  open  it  up  again  in  its  entirety,  and  re- 
discuss  it  in  all  its  bearings.  To  every  ques- 
tion he  returns  the  same  answer — yea,  yet  nay  ; 
with  the  possible  variation,  nay,  yet  perhaps 
yea.  He  understands,  of  course, — for  he  has 
studied  himself  to  good  purpose — that  the 
power  of  looking  on  all  sides  of  every  proposi- 
tion must  often  mean  lack  of  the  power  of  act- 
ing on  the  merits  of  any  one  of  them — that  a 
certain  onesidedness  of  character,  a  certain 
limitation  of  vision,  is  a  prerequisite  condition 
to  anything  like  practical  success.  There 
would  be  no  need  to  remind  him  that  the 
apostles  and  martyrs  were  not  broad  men. 
Strength,  firmness,  decision  he  admires  vastly 
in  others,  and  Garibaldi  and  Mazzini  he  men- 
tions always  with  respect  and  sometimes  with 
genuine  feeling.  But  for  himself,  he  finds  it 
impossible  to  make  up  his  mind  to  anything. 
There  is  always  so  much  to  be  said  on  the 
other  side. 

With   admirable  tact  and  skill  Clough  lays 


132         STUDIES  IN  IN TERPRE TA  TION. 

the  scene  of  his  story  in  Italy,  during  the  time 
of  the  futile  repubhcan  struggle  of  1849,  "when 
from  Janiculan  heights  thundered  the  cannon 
of  France."'  In  this  way  he  secures  a  fine 
background  of  practical  activity  against  which 
the  irresolution  of  his  hero  stands  out  with 
startling  distinctness.  The  stirring  events  of 
the  crisis,  the  deeds  of  courage  performed 
almost  beneath  his  eyes,  the  excited  groups  of 
the  cafe  and  the  street  corners,  have  a  tempo- 
rary influence  upon  his  sensitive  nature.  He 
is  aroused  by  a  brief  spasm  of  energy,  which, 
however,  finds  its  principal  outlet  in  talk.  He 
feels  that  it  is  a  noble  thing  to  "  offer  one's 
blood  an  oblation  to  freedom  "  ;  he  dreams  of 
''great  indignations  and  angers  transcenden- 
tal"; he  is  thankful  when  there  is  actually 
some  fighting,  and  rejoices  that  the  French- 
men are  beaten  and  the  friends  of  freedom 
triumphant.  Still,  there  are  so  many  con- 
siderations to  be  urged  against  his  taking  any 
personal  part  in  the  fray.  "  Individual  culture 
is  also  something,"  for  instance  ;  and  to  indi- 
vidual culture  practical  soldiering,  with  its  dis- 
tractions, would  prove  a  very  serious  obstacle. 
Moreover,  he  has  no  musket ;  if  he  had  one, 

'  It  will  be  remembered  that  Clough  was  himself  in  Rome 
during  this  period,  and  was  a  deeply-moved  eyewitness  of 
many  of  the  events  described  or  referred  to  in  his  poem.  His 
letters  written  at  this  time  furnish  an  interesting  commentary 
on  the  political  portions  of  the  work. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  1 33 

he  would  not  know  how  to  use  it ;  just  at 
present  he  is  preoccupied  with  ancient  marbles  ; 
he  rather  believes  that  he  owes  his  life  to  his 
own  country  ;  and  then — well,  there  was  a  fifth 
reason,  which  somehow  he  has  forgotten  ;  but 
still  "  four  good  reasons  are  ample."  More 
than  ample,  we  should  say ;  for  as  the  swift 
days,  with  their  grand  opportunities,  slip  by, 
Claude  remains  inert — interested,  fascinated, 
often  touched  to  the  quick  ;  but  still  inert. 

Equally  skilful  is  the  poet's  management  of 
the  more  purely  personal  side  of  his  story. 
Claude  is  in  love  ;  or,  at  least,  he  rather  be- 
lieves, for  a  time,  that  he  is — for  he  cannot 
after  all  quite  satisfy  himself  that  what  he  takes 
for  love  may  not  in  the  end  turn  out  to  be 
the  merely  "  factitious  "  results  of  "  juxtapo- 
sition— and  what  is  juxtaposition  ?  "  Thus 
once  again  what  Georgina  Trevellyn  patly  calls 
the  "shilly-shally"  quality  of  his  nature  be- 
trays him  into  sheer  weakness  and  consequent 
wretchedness.  Meanwhile  the  object  of  his 
affections,  or  at  all  events  of  his  fancy,  is  pre- 
sented to  us  as  an  admirable  foil  to  his  charac- 
ter. She  is  a  simple,  practical-minded,  straight- 
forward little  English  girl,  absolutely  unso- 
phisticated, full  of  common  sense,  and  with  a 
way  of  looking  at  things  and  of  dealing  with 
them  the  very  antithesis  of  her  strange  and  un- 
satisfactory lover's.  We  feel  as  we  read  their 
letters  that  if  anything  in  the  world  could  save 


134        STUDIES  IN-  INTERPRETATION. 

the  poor  young  fellow  from  the  fate  of  his 
temperament  and  education,  it  would  be  the 
love  and  help  and — let  us  admit  it — the  British 
Philistinism,  of  such  a  girl  as  "  juxtaposition  " 
here  throws  into  his  way.  But  the  incipient 
love-story  of  course  comes  to  nothing.  After 
pages  of  epistolary  self-revelation,  and  days 
and  nights  of  argument  and  introspection  on 
the  part  of  Claude,  circumstances  intervene, 
and  put  a  summary  close  to  the  entire  episode. 
Claude  is  suddenly  stung  to  a  realization  of  the 
chance  he  has  wasted,  and  for  a  moment  seems 
to  stand  on  the  verge  of  definite  action.  But 
the  inspiration  subsides  once  more  under  the 
relentless  pressure  of  thought.  "  After  all,  do 
I  know  that  I  really  care  so  about  her?"  he 
inquires.  "  After  all,  perhaps,  there  is  some- 
thing factitious  about  it ;  I  have  had  pain,  it  is 
true  ;  I  have  wept,  and  so  have  the  actors." 

With  a  short-sightedness  rare  in  his  criti- 
cism, Emerson  complained  that  Clough  should 
have  made  the  story  end  so  unsatisfactorily. 
But  how  could  it  have  ended  otherwise  ?  Like 
DipsycJius,  the  Amours  de  Voyage  is  both  a 
study  and  a  warning.  It  is  a  study  once  again 
of  "  over-educated  weakness  of  purpose  "  ;  it  is 
a  warning  against  the  disastrous  moral  results 
which,  as  Clough  felt  so  keenly,  our  modern 
subjective  tendencies  threaten  to  bring  in  their 
train. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  135 

IV. 

The  above  considerations  will  help  us  to 
understand  another  salient  characteristic  of 
dough's  poetry — its  constant  insistence  upon 
our  modern  need  for  a  simpler  and  less  sophis- 
ticated relation  with  life  and  its  facts  than 
seems  possible  to  most  cultivated  men  in  our 
present  state  of  civilization.  There  is  some- 
thing deeply  pathetic  about  the  way  in  which 
this  perplexed  and  sensitive  man  of  the  century, 
borne  down  by 

"  that  load,  which  where 
Thought  is,  is  with  it  " — ' 

face  to  face  with  the  "  vext  conundrums  of 
existence,"  struggling  to  disentangle  his  own 
"  twisted  thinkings,"  and  unable  to  shake  him- 
self free  from  his  haunting  self-consciousness, 
is  to  be  found  crying  out  again  and  again  from 
the  depths  of  his  troubled  heart  for  more  sim- 
plicity, more  healthy  and  direct  contact  with 
reality,  less  examination  of  motive  and  feeling, 
less  theorizing  about  things.  "  Balzac  n'a  pas 
eu  le  temps  de  vivre,''  writes  Monsieur  Bourget, 
in  reference  to  the  great  French  novelist's 
ceaseless  activity  and  unremitting  toil.  In 
much  the  same  spirit  Clough  is  always  pro- 
claiming that  men  have  become  so  pre-occu- 
pied  with  the  problems  arising  out  of  existencCj, 

'  Two  Moods. 


136        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

that  life's  possibilities  of  enjoyment  escape 
them,  its  manifold  chances  slip  by  them  unob- 
served and  unutilized.  Could  we  but  become 
as  children,  accepting  the  moment  for  what  it 
brings  us,  made  restless  by  no  arricrc  pens^e, 
and  harassed  by  no  pitiless  and  importunate 
questions  that  drive  us  crazy  by  their  iteration, 
and  remain  unanswered  and  unanswerable  at 
the  last,  what  a  heaven  of  happiness  would 
be  open  to  every  one  of  us,  hour  by  hour,  day 
by  day  !  "  O  blessed  ages  of  pure,  spontaneous, 
unconscious,  unthinking,  unreasoning  life  and 
action,  to  you,  either  in  the  past  or  the  future, 
the  human  heart  is  still  fain  to  recur — still  must 
dream,  even  though  it  be  but  a  dream,  of  how 
sweet  it  were  to  grow  as  the  green  herb,  to 
bloom  as  the  spring  flowers,  to  be  good  because 
we  cannot  be  otherwise,  and  happy  because 
we  cannot  help  it.  O,  blessed  ages  indeed  ! 
But  have  such,  since  men  were  men,  ever  been  ? 
Or  are  such,  while  men  are  men,  ever  likely  to 
come?"'  Certainly  there  seems  but  small 
chance  of  such  a  consummation  in  the  age  in 
which  we  ourselves  live.  Never  was  the  world 
further  from  the  "  negative  capability  "  of  which 
Keats  wrote — never  more  likely  to  make  ship- 
wreck of  its  peace  and  satisfaction  upon  the 

'  Extracts  from  a  Review  of  a  Work  Entitled  Considera- 
tions on  Some  Recent  Social  Theories.  Originally  published 
in  the  N'orth  American  Review,  for  July,  1853.  Reprinted  in 
Frose  Remains,  pp.  405-12. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  13/ 

shoals  of  speculation  and  amid  the  breakers  of 
thought. 

Let  us  take,  by  way  of  illustrating  Clough's 
feeling  about  these  matters,  a  passage  or  two 
from  the  longer  poems  just  above  dealt  with. 
Here,  for  instance,  is  one  in  which  Claude,  of  the 
Amours  de  Voyage,  expresses  himself  with  a  sud- 
den outburst  of  bitterness  which  is  the  more 
instructive  by  reason  of  the  very  fact  that  it 
lacks  entirely  the  youth's  customary  philosophic 
placidity. 

"  Hang  this    thinking,  at  last  !     what  good  is  it  ? 

oh,  and  what  evil  ! 
Oh,  what  mischief  and  pain  !  like  a  clock  in  a  sick 

man's  chamber, 
Ticking  and  ticking,  and  still  through  each  covert 

of  slumber  pursuing. 
What  shall  I  do  to  thee,  O  thou  Preserver  of  men  ? 

Have  compassion  ; 
Be  favorable  and  hear  !     Take  from  me  this  regal 

knowledge  ; 
Let  me  contented  and  mute,  with  the  beasts  of  the 

fields,  my  brothers, 
Tranquilly,  happily  lie, — and  eat  grass  like  Nebu- 
chadnezzar !  "  * 

This  of  course  has  the  note  of  extravagance 
— of  extreme  and  unreasoning  disgust.  But  in 
more  temperate  phraseology,  Claude  had  only 
just  before  given  utterance  to  the  same  reac- 
tionary feeling. 

'  Amours  du  Voyage,  Canto  iii.,  §  lO. 


138        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

"Life  is  beautiful,  Eustace,  entrancing,  enchanting 
to  look  at  ; 

As  are  the  streets  of  a  city  we  pace  while  the  car- 
riage is  changing, 

As  a  chamber  filled  in  with  harmonious,  exquisite 
pictures, 

Even  so  beautiful  Earth  ;  and  could  we  eliminate 
only 

This  vile  hungering  impulse,  this  demon  within  us 
of  craving. 

Life  were  beatitude,  living  a  perfect  divine  satis- 
faction." ' 

Thus  docs  Claude  more  calmly  define  his 
position;  and  in  words  that  are  strangely  simi- 
lar— for  the  two  passages  almost  paraphrase 
one  another — Dipsychus  deliberately  declares 
himself  to  the  same  effect. 

"  Yes,  it  is  beautiful  ever,  let  foolish  men  rail  at  it 

never. 
Yes,  it  is  beautiful  truly,  my  brothers,  1  grant  it  you 

duly. 
Wise  are  ye  others  that  choose  it,  and  hapi)y  ye  all 

that  can  use  it. 
Life  it  is  beautiful  wholly,  and  could  we  eliminate 

only 
This  interfering,   enslaving,   o'ermastering  demon 

of  craving. 
This  wicked  tempter  inside  us  to  ruin  still  eager  to 

guide  us, 
Life  were  beatitude,  action  a  possible  pure  satis- 
faction." ' 

'  Amours  dii  Voyage,  Canto  iii.,  §  8. 
^  Dipsychus,  Part  ii.,  Scene  2. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  1 39 

These,  indeed,  are  quasi-dramatic  utterances, 
though  the  personal  accent  in  them  can  hardly 
be  mistaken.  Let  us,  therefore,  join  with  them 
a  single  passage  in  which  Clough  speaks  very 
distinctly  for  himself.  He  is  preaching  a  ser- 
mon on  the  old  text :  "  This  also,  saith  the 
Preacher,  is  a  sore  evil  that  I  have  seen  under 
the  sun." 

"  To  grow  old,  therefore,  learning  and  un- 
learning, is  such  the  conclusion  ?  Conclusion 
or  no  conclusion,  such,  alas!  appears  to  be  our 
inevitable  lot,  the  fixed  ordinance  of  the  life 
we  live.  The  cruel  King  Tarchetius  gave  his 
daughters  a  web  to  weave,  upon  the  completion 
of  which  he  said  they  should  get  married  ;  and 
what  these  involuntary  Penelopes  did  in  the 
daytime,  servants  by  his  orders  undid  at  night. 
A  hopeless  and  weary  v/ork,  indeed,  especially 
for  young  people  desirous  to  get  married. 

"  Weaving  and  unweaving,  learning  and  un- 
learning, learning  painfully,  painfully  unlearn- 
ing, under  the  orders  of  the  cruel  King  Tarche- 
tius, behold — are  we  to  say  '  our  life  '  ?  '  Every 
new  lesson,'  saith  the  Oriental  proverb,  '  is  an- 
other gray  hair  ;  and  time  will  pluck  out  this 
also.'  And  what  said  the  Preacher?  '  I,  the 
Preacher,  was  King  over  Israel  in  Jerusalem. 
And  I  gave  my  heart  to  seek  and  search  out  by 
wisdom  concerning  all  things  that  are  done 
under  the  heavens ;  this  sore  travail  hath  God 
given   unto  the  sons  of  men  to  be   exercised 


I40         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

therewith.'  PcrcJid  pcnsa?  Pcnsando  sinvcc- 
chia,'  said  the  young  unthinking  Italian  to  the 
grave  German  sitting  by  him  in  the  dihgence, 
whose  name  was  Goethe.     Is  it  true  ? 

"  To  spend  uncounted  years  of  pain 
Again,  again,  and  yet  again. 
In  working  out  in  heart  and  brain 

The  problem  of  our  being  here  ; 
To  gather  facts  from  far  and  near  ; 
Upon  the  mind  to  hold  them  clear, 
And,  knowing  more  may  yet  appear, 
Unto  one's  latest  breath  to  fear 
The  premature  result  to  draw, — 
Is  this  the  object,  end,  and  law 

And  purpose  of  our  being  here  ?  "  ' 

An  unintentional  and  indirect  answer  to  the 
question  propounded  in  these  verses  may  per- 
haps be  found  in  the  writer's  beautiful  and  deli- 
cate little  London  Idyl. 

Nor  is  it  happiness  alone,  as  Clough  feels,  that 
we  are  in  danger  of  losing  through  our  modern 
sophistication.  We  are  in  danger  of  losing  ro- 
bustness, our  practical  hold  upon  things,  our 
chances  of  usefulness,  as  well.  Tell  me,  asks 
Claude,  in  a  letter  to  his  confident,  Eustace, 

"Tell  me,  my  friend,  do  you  think  that  the  brain 
would  sprout  in  the  furrow, 

'  Letters  of  Parepidemus{Prose  Remains, ^^.  384-85).  The 
verses  are  published  separately  in  Clough's  Poems  under  the 
title  Perc he  Pcnsa  ?  Pcnsando  s' Invecchia. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  I4I 

Did  It  not  truly  accept  as  its  sumnium  and  ultiinmn 

boniiin 
That  mere  common  and  may  be  indifferent  soil  it 

is  set  in  ? 
Would  it  have  force  to  develop  and  open  its  young 

cotyledons, 
Could  it  compare,  and   reflect,   and  examine  one 

thing  with  another  ? 
Would  it  endure  to  accomplish  the  round   of  its 

natural  functions 
Were  it  endowed  with  a  sense  of  the  general  scheme 

of  existence  ?  "  ' 

The  question  thus  raised  has,  it  need  hardly  be 
said,  human  and  moral  bearings  of  wide  sweep 
and  significance. 


And  now  it  will  not  be  difificuit  for  us  to 
understand  what  seems  to  us  to  be  the  most 
important  element  in  Clough's  general  philoso- 
phy of  life — his  faith  in  work — hard,  steady, 
practical  work — as  a  corrective  to  over-specula- 
tion and  its  manifold  and  insidious  evils.  Upon 
this  point  Clough  has  been  more  than  once 
misrepresented,  and  there  is  thus  the  more  need 
for  us  to  lay  stress  upon  it  here.  To  hold  fast 
to  reality,  and  to  do  something — such  is  the 
gist  of  much  of  his  most  earnest  teaching.  We 
cannot  be  saved  from  the  dangers  of  sophistica- 
tion by  argument  or  theory  ;  to  attempt  this 

^Amours  du  Voyage,  Canto  iii.,  §  2. 


142         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

course  would  only  be  to  submerge  ourselves  at 
last  in  quagmires  of  more  desperate  depths. 
We  must  have  our  intellectual  sanity  preserved 
or  restored  for  us  by  healthy  contact  with  the 
world  of  every-day  fact.  Herein  lies  the  ex- 
planation of  the  final  success  of  Philip  Hewson 
in  The Bothie  of  Tober-na-Vuolich.  Enthusiast 
and  dreamer  as  he  is,  he  nevertheless  remains 
in  firm  touch  with  actuality,  and  is  willing  to 
turn  with  simple,  manly  courage  to  the  task- 
work which  it  is  given  him  to  do.  Contrast 
this  more  sturdy  apostle  of  the  ideal  with  such 
characters  as  Claude  and  Dipsychus  ;  mark  his 
'solution  of  the  problem  of  existence  and  the 
tragic  issues  of  the  intellectual  struggles  of 
these  others  ;  and  the  purpose  of  the  poet  be- 
comes perfectly  clear. 

"  Do  we  not  work  best  by  digging  deepest  ? 
by  avoiding  polemics,  and  searching  to  display 
the  real  thing?  "  he  asks,  in  a  letter  to  Thomas 
Arnold  (the  younger).'  And  again,  addressing 
a  nameless  friend :  "  Enter  the  arena  of  your 
brethren,  and  go  not  to  your  grave  without 
knowing  what  common  merchants  and  solici- 
tors, much  more  sailors  and  coalheavers  are 
acquainted  with.  Ignorance  is  a  poor  kind  of 
innocence.  The  world  is  wiser  than  the  wise, 
and  as  innocent  as  the  innocent  ;  and  it  has 
long  been  found  out  what  is  the  best  way  of 
taking    things.     'The    earth,'    said    the    great 

'  Prose  Remains,  p.  170. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  1 43 

traveller,  '  is  much  the  same  wherever  we  go  '  ; 
and  the  changes  of  position  which  women  and 
students  tremble  and  shilly-shally  before,  leave 
things  much  as  they  found  them.  Cciinin  non 
aniimim  imitant.  The  winter  comes  and  de- 
stroys all,  but  in  the  spring  the  old  grasses 
come  up  all  the  greener.  Let  us  not  sit  in  a 
corner  and  mope,  and  think  ourselves  clever, 
for  our  comfort,  while  the  room  is  full  of  danc- 
ing; and  cheerfulness.  The  sum  of  the  whole 
matter  is  this.  Whatsoever  your  hand  findeth 
to  do,  do  it  without  fiddle-faddling  ;  for  there 
is  no  experience,  nor  pleasure,  nor  pain,  nor  in- 
struction, nor  anything  else  in  the  grave  whither 
thou  goest.  When  you  get  to  the  end  of  this 
life,  you  won't  find  another  ready-made  in 
which  you  can  do  without  effort  what  you 
were  meant  to  with  effort  here.""  '  And  once 
more  :  ''  Meantime,  in  defence  of  silence,  I 
have  always  an  impression  that  what  is  taken 
to  talk  with,  is  lost  to  act  with  ;  you  cannot 
speak  your  wisdom  and  have  it.  .  .  .  All 
things  become  clear  to  me  by  work  more  than  by 
anything  else.  Any  kind  of  drudgery  will  help 
one  out  of  the  most  uncommon  either  senti- 
mental or  speculative  perplexity;  the  attitude 
of  work  is  the  only  one  in  which  one  can  see 
things  properly.  One  may  be  afraid  sometimes 
of  destroying  the  beauty  of  one's  dreams  by 
doing  anything,  losing  sight  of  what  perhaps 

'  Prose  Remains,  pp.  173-74. 


144        STUDIES  IN  IMTERPRETATION. 

one  may  not  be  able  to  recover  ;  it  need  not 
be  so."  '  With  these  fine  words  in  mind,  every 
reader  of  Clough  will  turn  with  renewed  affec- 
tion to  the  noble  poem  in  which,  of  all  others, 
these  ideas  concerning  the  sanctity  of  work, 
find  their  fullest  expression — Qui  Laborat,  Orat. 

"  O  only  Source  of  all  our  light  and  life, 

Whom  as  our  truth,  our  strength,  we  see  and  feel, 

But  whom  the  hours  of  mortal,  moral  strife 
Alone  aright  reveal  ! 

"  Mine  inmost  soul  before  Thee  inly  brought, 
Thy  presence  owns  ineffable,  divine  ; 

Chastised  each  rebel  self-encentred  thought, 
My  will  adoreth  Thine. 

"With  eye  down-dropt,  if  then  this  earthly  mind 
Speechless  remain,  or  speechless  e'en  depart  ; 

Nor  seek  to  see — for  what  of  earthly  kind 
Can  see  Thee  as  Thou  art  ? 

"  If  well-assured  't  is  but  profanely  bold 

In  thought's  abstractest  forms  to  seem  to  see. 

It  dare  not  dare  the  dread  communion  hold 
In  ways  unworthy  Thee. 

"  O  not  unowned,  thou  shalt  unnamed  forgive, 
In  worldly  walks  the  prayerless  heart  prepare  ; 

And  if  in  work  its  life  it  seem  to  live, 
Shalt  make  that  work  be  prayer. 

'  Prose  Remains,  p.  180. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH.  I45 

"  Nor  times  shall  lack,  when  while  the  work  it  plies, 
Unsummoned  powers  the  blinding  film  shall  part, 

And  scarce  by  happy  tears  made  dim,  the  eyes 
In  recognition  start. 

"  But,  as  Thou  wiliest,  give  or  e'en  forbear 

The  beatific  supersensual  sight, 
So,  with  Thy  blessing  blest,  that  humbler  prayer 

Approach  Thee  morn  and  night." 

We  have  said  that  Clough's  poetry  is  a  poetry 
of  skepticism,  the  utterance  of  varying  moods. 
It  remains  to  add  that  the  skepticism  was  al- 
ways courageous,  the  moods,  even  at  their 
darkest,  touched  with  a  radiance  that  came 
from  faith  in  the  upshot  of  things.  About  this 
man  and  his  work  there  was  nothing  mawkish 
or  sentimental.  He  was  too  sane  to  nurse 
despair,  too  manly  to  harp  persistently  upon 
the  mouldered  strings  of  life.  Hence,  in  spite 
of  all  its  perplexity,  its  craving,  its  restlessness, 
his  verse  possesses  the  finest  inspirational 
qualities  for  readers  who  are  able  to  adopt,  even 
provisionally,  his  lofty  and  disinterested  point 
of  view.  He  has  nothing  to  tell  us  that  will 
serve  to  make  life  less  strenuous,  less  complex, 
less  enigmatical ;  nothing  that  will  lighten  our 
sense  of  individual  responsibility,  or  help  to 
cultivate  within  us  that  essentially  vulgar  tem- 
per— the  temper  of  easy-going  optimism.  But 
the  note  of  fortitude,  of  self-reliance,  is  to  be 
heard  in  all  his  work  ;  and  to  this  fortitude,  to 


146        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

this  self-reliance,  motive  and  purpose  are  given 
by  his  unshaken  belief  that  somehow,  in  some 
mysterious  way,  a  dramatic  purpose  runs 
through  the  life  of  the  world,  moulding  and 
directing  the  immature  and  seemingly  inefTec- 
tual  energies  of  men  to  issues  of  good  as  yet 
unseen  and  undreamed  of. 

To  illustrate  this  liigh  courage  and  this  in- 
spiration of  the  larger  hope  in  Clough's  writ- 
ings a  few  brief  citations  will  suffice. 

"  Are  you  aware,"  he  writes  in  one  of  his 
letters  from  America,  "  that  life  is  very  like  a 
railway  ? '  One  gets  into  deep  cuttings  and 
long  dark  tunnels,  where  one  sees  nothing  and 
hears  twice  as  much  noise  as  usual,  and  one 
can't  read,  and  one  shuts  up  the  window  and 
waits,  and  then  it  all  comes  clear  again.  Only 
in  life  it  sometimes  feels  as  if  one  had  to  dig 
the  tunnel  as  one  goes  along,  all  new  for  one- 
self. Go  straight  on,  however,  and  one  's  sure 
to  come  out  into  a  new  country,  on  the  other 
side  the  hills,  sunny  and  bright.  There  's  an 
apologue  for  you  !  "  "^ 

From  an  earlier  letter  the  following  sentences 
may  be  reproduced  for  their  expression  of  the 
man's  informing  faith  in  the  persistency  of  the 
saving  forces  of  the  world.  Their  fine  imper- 
sonality will  hardly  escape  attention. 

'  The  comparison  of  life  with  a  railway-tunnel,  from  which 
we  may  by  and  by  emerge  into  sunshine  and  clear  day,  will 
be  found  again  in  the  Amours  de  Voyage,  Canto  v.,  §  g. 

'-'  Prose  Remains,  p.  205. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  1 47 

*'  It  is  far  nobler  to  teach  people  to  do  what 
is  good  because  it  is  good  simply,  than  for  the 
sake  of  any  future  reward.  .  .  .  Besides  if 
we  die  and  come  to  nothing  it  does  not  there- 
fore follow  that  life  and  goodness  will  cease  to 
be  in  earth  and  heaven.  If  we  give  over  danc- 
ing, it  does  n't  therefore  follow  that  the  dance 
ceases  itself,  or  the  music.  Be  satisfied  that 
whatever  is  good  in  us  will  be  immortal ;  and 
as  the  parent  is  content  to  die  in  the  conscious, 
ness  of  the  child's  survival,  even  so,  why  not 
we  ?  There  's  a  creed  which  will  sufifice  for  the 
present."  ' 

And  now  for  two  short  poems  in  which  these 
same  principles  of  life  and  faith  are  set  forth  in 
the  distinctest  possible  way. 

"  VVhate'er  you  dream  with  doubt  possest, 
Keep,  keep  it  snug  within  your  breast. 
And  lay  you  down  and  take  your  rest  ; 
Forget  in  sleep  the  doubt  and  pain. 
And  when  you  wake,  to  work  again. 
The  wind  it  blows,  the  vessel  goes. 
And  where  and  whither,  no  one  knows. 

"  'T  will  all  be  well  ;  no  need  of  care  ; 
Though  how  it  will,  and  when,  and  where. 
We  cannot  see,  and  can't  declare. 
In  spite  of  dreams,  in  spite  of  thought, 
'T  is  not  in  vain,  and  not  for  nought. 
The  wind  it  blows,  the  ship  it  goes, 
Though  where  and  whither,  no  one  knows."* 

^  Prose  Remains,  p.  139.  '^  All  Is  Well. 


14^^        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

In  the  reading  of  these  lines  we  feel  that  we 
are  able  to  understand  the  working  philosophy 
of  Clough's  life.  Do  your  best,  in  all  courage 
and  humility,  holding  yourself  secure  in  the 
faith  that  the  heart  of  the  universe  is  sound, 
and  that  the  processes  of  the  world  can  be 
trusted  for  the  results.  Viewing  existence  from 
the  standpoint  of  our  own  little  experiences, 
with  their  struggles,  their  constant  failures, 
their  unrealized  aspirations,  their  thwarted 
aims,  we  may  often  find  ourselves  disheartened 
and  dismayed.  At  such  seasons  as  these  we 
may  seek  renewal  of  hope  in  rising  above  the 
level  of  our  petty  individual  lives,  and  in  sur- 
veying man  and  his  destiny  in  a  more  im- 
personal way. 

"  It  fortifies  my  soul  to  know 
That,  though  I  perish,  Truth  is  so  : 
That,  howso'er  I  stray  and  range, 
Whate'er  I  do,  Thou  dost  not  change. 
I  steadier  step  when  I  recall 
That  if  I  slip,  Thou  dost  not  fall."  ' 

'  The  poetry  of  Clough  will  never  appeal  to  a 
very  wide  circle  of  readers.  In  both  matter 
and  style,  it  lacks  the  elements  that  ensure 
popularity  ;  for  it  carries  with  it  too  heavy  a 
burden  of  thought ;  and  it  is,  moreover,  taken 

'  ' '  With  Whom  is  no  variableness,  neither  shado'M  of  turn- 
ing." The  later  verses,  ' '  Say  not  the  struggle  noitght  availeth" 
may  be  referred  to  in  the  same  connection. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  C LOUGH.  1 49 

as  a  whole,  deficient  in  flexibility,  warmth,  and 
color.  But  for  the  student  of  nineteenth- 
century  thought  and  its  development  in  litera- 
ture, his  writings  possess  almost  unique  interest 
and  value.  For  they  are  the  utterance  of  a 
man  of  whom  Mr.  Lowell,  without  exaggera- 
tion, has  written:  "  I  have  a  foreboding  that 
Clough,  imperfect  as  he  was  in  many  respects, 
and  dying  before  he  had  subdued  his  sensitive 
temperament  to  the  sterner  requirements  of  his 
art,  will  be  thought  a  hundred  years  hence  to 
have  been  the  truest  expression  in  verse  of  the 
moral  and  intellectual  tendencies,  the  doubt 
and  struggle  towards  settled  convictions,  of  the 
period  in  which  he  lived."  ' 


'  Essay  on  Swiitburne' s  Tragedies.    See  also  his  passing  judg- 
ment in  his  paper  On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners, 


III. 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


III. 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 
I. 

THE  subject  of  our  study  in  the  present 
chapter  is  Matthew  Arnold  the  poet ; 
and  it  will  be  well  to  understand  clearly 
at  the  outset  that  the  delightful  prose  works 
through  which  this  writer  made  his  influence 
so  widely  felt  will  be  referred  to  only  inci- 
dentally, and  for  the  light  which  they  may  be 
found  to  throw  upon  the  methods  and  charac- 
teristics of  his  verse.  An  initial  word  concern- 
ing the  relation  between  these  two  expressions 
of  his  genius  will  none  the  less  be  desirable  at 
the  commencement  of  our  discussion. 

It  cannot  have  escaped  the  observation  of 
even  the  most  casual  reader  of  Arnold's  collect- 
ed writings  that  between  his  verse  as  a  whole, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  his  prose,  as  a  whole  upon 
the  other,  there  is  a  profound  difference  of 
tone  and  spiritual  quality.  Each  is  indeed 
marked  by  the  same  note  of  high  and  firm 
courage  ;  each  reveals  the  same  graciousness 
and  urbanity  of  phrase  and  manner ;  each  is 

153 


154         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

evidently  in  equal  degree  the  output  of  a 
singularly  sane  and  noble  nature.  But  the  one 
is  weighted  down  by  the  persistent  sense  of 
misgiving,  gloom,  futility,  and  despair ;  while 
the  other,  taken  in  the  mass,  is  wonderfully 
strong,  buoyant,  cheery,  and  decisive.  What 
is  the  meaning  of  this  remarkable  difference? 
Why  should  Arnold  have  made  his  prose  the 
vehicle  of  breezy  hopefulness,  and  have  re- 
served his  poetry  as  the  medium  of  his  more 
melancholy  utterances  concerning  human  life 
and  destiny  ? 

A  double  answer  may  be  suggested  by  way 
of  partial  explanation.  In  the  first  place, 
Arnold's  verse  is,  broadly  speaking,  the  produc- 
tion of  his  earlier  manhood  ;  while  his  great 
prose  work  belongs  to  his  maturer  years.  It  is 
natural,  therefore,  that  the  former  should  be 
full  of  a  young  man's  struggle,  uncertainty,  and 
questioning  ;  and  just  as  natural  that  the  latter 
should  be  marked  by  constructive  effort  and 
the  general  settlement  of  thought.  Arnold's 
spiritual  pilgrimage  lay  for  a  protracted  period 
along  dark  and  difficult  ways,  and  of  the  moods 
engendered  by  the  experiences  of  his  specula- 
tive conflicts  his  poetry  is  the  lucid  but  always 
dignified  expression.  But  even  as  that  poetry 
itself  shows  us,  his  nature  was  at  bottom  too 
practical  and  healthy  to  remain  permanently 
satisfied  with  merely  negative  results.  To 
linger  by  the  wayside,  and  complain  that  the 


A/ A  T  THE  W  A  RNOLD.  I  5  5 

road  was  rough,  and  the  journey  of  Hfe  hard  and 
toilsome,  might  be  well  enough  for  a  season. 
His  utterances  brought  him  a  measure  of  relief, 
and  they  helped  to  soothe  and  comfort,  even  if 
they  did  not  exactly  inspire,  many  fellow-way- 
farers, distracted  and  downhearted  like  him- 
self. But  the  hour  came  when  he  was  to  feel  the 
goading  impulse  of  manhood's  sterner  needs; 
and  then  he  turned  to  the  task  of  breaking 
new  paths  for  his  generation,  pressing  forward 
himself  through  thicket  and  morass  in  the 
direction  wherein,  as  he  believed,  lay  the 
promise  of  open  skies,  and  fresh  air,  and  new 
light.  Of  these  pioneer  efforts  we  may  read  the 
record  in  Arnold's  later  prose,  which  palpitates 
with  the  courage  of  the  pathfinder,  and  the 
exhilaration  which  comes  from  experiment  and 
adventure  in  the  vanguard  of  the  world's  pro- 
gressive thought. 

But  beyond  this,  when  we  contrast  the  tone 
and  spirit  of  Arnold's  verse  with  the  tone  and 
spirit  of  his  prose,  we  find  ourselves  confronted 
by  an  illustration,  on  a  small  and  personal 
scale,  of  that  inevitable  tendency  of  the  emo- 
tions to  lag  behind  the  intellect,  which  is  ex- 
hibited at  large  in  the  general  history  of 
nineteenth  -  century  thought.  In  Arnold's 
verse,  the  feelings  are  in  the  ascendant,  and 
strike  the  keynote  of  his  criticism  upon  life. 
In  his  prose  the  intellect  takes  the  lead,  and 
sweeps  on  whither  the  emotions  might  often 


156         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

find  it  difficult  to  follow.  The  one  speaks  for 
the  heart,  and  comes  as  a  simple  cry  out  of  the 
great  darkness.  The  other  takes  its  inspiration 
from  a  clear  brain,  resolutely  facing  the  causes 
of  the  existing  spiritual  unrest,  and  striving  to 
make  palpable  to  self  and  others  the  means 
whereby  the  new  era  of  adjustment,  with  its 
larger  faith  and  wider  religious  outlook,  may 
ultimately  be  brought  about. 

Taken  together,  the  two  considerations  here 
touched  upon  will,  we  think,  go  far  to  explain 
the  difference  in  mood  and  temper  between 
Arnold  the  poet  and  Arnold  the  essayist 
— between  the  author  of  Dover  Beach,  and 
the  Stanzas  to  Oberinann,  for  example,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  author  of  Culture  and 
Anarchy  and  God  and  the  Bible  on  the  other. 
They  help  us  at  least  to  a  partial  understand- 
ing of  a  preliminary  question  of  real  importance 
— the  question,  namely,  why,  after  showing 
his  high  and  pure  gift  of  song  in  the  produc- 
tions of  his  earlier  years,  Arnold  should  then 
have  practically  abandoned  verse  altogether, 
turning  to  prose  as  the  fitting  medium  for  the 
large  constructive  undertakings  to  which  the 
greater  part  of  his  later  hfe  was  to  be  devoted. 

II. 

Of  the  formative  conditions  of  Matthew 
Arnold's    intellectual    development   we    need 


MA  TTHE IV  ARNOLD.  I  57 

speak  only  in  brief,  since  they  were  practi- 
cally the  same  as  those  we  have  already  an- 
alyzed with  some  approach  to  detail  in  the 
case  of  his  friend  and  spiritual  kinsman,  Clough. 
As  the  son  of  Thomas  Arnold  of  Rugby,  the 
subject  of  our  present  study  naturally  felt  the 
full  influence  of  that  magnetic  personality 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  played  so  large  a  part 
in  the  moulding  of  Clough's  genius  and  charac- 
ter. If  the  force  and  inspiration  of  "  that  great 
teacher  of  historic  truth,  that  greater  teacher  of 
moral  right,"  '  were  so  operative  in  the  case  of 
a  mere  pupil,  their  potency  in  the  case  of  a 
son  temperamentally  impressionable  and  re- 
sponsive in  the  highest  degree,  must  have  been 
still  more  marked.  Yet  here  we  broach  a  curi- 
ous question  in  relation  to  the  tendency  of 
Thomas  Arnold's  power  over  the  younger 
generation — a  question  which  Clough  himself 
touched  upon  with  some  resolution  in  the  Epi- 
logue to  Dipsychiis,  and  which  is  forced  even 
more  directly  upon  our  attention  as  we  come 
to  examine  the  intellectual  differences  separat- 
ing father  and  son.  The  elder  Arnold  would 
have  been  the  last  of  teachers  to  desire  to 
foster  the  speculative  and  introspective  habits 
of  mind  which  none  the  less  became  singularly 
characteristic  of  the  best  of  the  men  who  went 
out  from  the  Rugby  of  his  time.  He  was  him- 
self a  thinker  of  the  most  positive  order  ;  emi- 

'  Freeman,  Inaugural  Lecture,  1884. 


158         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

nently  level-headed,  sane,  well-balanced  ;  and 
marked,  as  his  son  remembered  well,  by  "  buoy- 
ant cheerfulness  clear.  "  '  With  little  talent  and 
less  inclination  for  abstract  and  metaphysical 
discussion,  he  treated  the  theological  questions 
that  grew  out  of  the  progressive  conditions  of 
his  age  from  the  standpoint  of  sound,  liberal 
commonsense,  priding  himself  especially  upon 
his  opposition  to  the  subtleties  and  vagaries  of 
Newmanism  ;  and  finding  the  material  for  the 
great  literary  undertaking  of  his  life  in  the 
doings  of  the  Romans — a  people  he  admired 
greatly  for  their  sterling  practical  character, 
"  their  love  of  institutions  and  order,  and  their 
reverence  for  law." "  How  it  came  about,  there- 
fore, that  a  man  of  this  steady  and  wholesome 
type  should  actually  have  imparted  a  bias  so 
different  from  his  own  to  so  many  of  the  young 
men  \Vho  had  been  thrown  or  drawn  within 
the  magic  circle  of  his  personal  power,  would 
seem  indeed  a  puzzle  without  solution  did  we 
not  recall  the  fact,  already  dwelt  on  in  our 
previous  essay,  that  his  whole  method  and 
system  of  school-government — his  habit  of  treat- 
ing boys  as  intellectually  responsible  beings, 
his  constant  appeal  to  their  sense  of  truth  and 
honor — were  exactly  calculated  to  produce  that 
scrupulousness  in  action,  high  regard  for  right, 
and  intense  feeling  of  personal  obligation,  which 

'  Rugby  Chapel,  November,  18^7. 

*  Stanley's  life  0/  Dr.  Arnold,  Vol.  i.,  p.  1S9. 


MA  TTHE  IV  A  RNOLD.  1 5 9 

combined  to  distinguish  the  men  of  Arnold's 
making,  and  led  in  the  case  of  the  more  sensi- 
tive among  them  to  over-excitation  of  the  re- 
ligious feeling,  and  almost  morbid  irritability  of 
conscience.  "  It  's  all  Arnold's  doing.  He 
spoilt  the  public  schools  "  ;  such  we  remember 
was  the  comment  of  the  outspoken  old  uncle 
in  the  Epilogue  to  Dipsychus.  "  Dr.  Arnold," 
wrote  an  astute  and  far-sighted  critic,  "was 
almost  indisputably  an  admirable  master  for  a 
common  English  boy — the  small,  apple-eating 
animal  whom  we  know.  He  worked  — he 
pounded,  if  the  phrase  may  be  used — into  the 
boy  a  belief,  or  at  any  rate  a  floating  confused 
conception,  that  there  are  great  subjects,  that 
there  are  strange  problems,  that  knowledge  has 
an  indefinite  value,  that  life  is  a  serious  and 
solemn  thing.  The  influence  of  Arnold's  teach- 
ing upon  the  majority  of  his  pupils,  was  prob- 
ably very  vague,  but  very  good.  .  .  .  But 
there  are  a  few  minds  which  are  very  likely  to 
think  too  much  of  such  things.  A  susceptible, 
serious,  intellectual  boy  may  be  injured  by  the 
incessant  inculcation  of  the  awfulness  of  life, 
and  the  magnitude  of  great  problems.  It  is 
not  desirable  to  take  this  world  too  much  an 
serieiix  :  most  persons  will  not ;  and  the  one 
in  a  thousand,  should  not."  '     All  this  is  well 

1  Walter  Basehot,  Air.  Cloze^/i's  Poems.  This  article  con- 
tains  an  admirable  discussion  of  the  influence  of  "Arnold- 
ism"  in  leading  up  to  and  paving  the  way  for  "  Newmanism." 


/^ 


l6o        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

said,  and  helps  us  to  understand  how  it  hap- 
pened that  Thomas  Arnold's  best  pupils  were 
men  who  in  after  life  were  characterized,  as 
Clough  and  the  younger  Arnold  were  charac- 
terized, not  by  their  teacher's  robustness,  cer- 
tainty, positiveness,  and  practicality,  but  often 
enough  by  qualities  the  reverse  of  these. 

Trained  thus  in  the  same  early  environment, 
Arnold  like  Clough  left  the  Rugby  of  his  father's 
regime  only  to  enter  the  Oxford  of  Tractarian 
days,  and  there  undergo  a  similar  intellectual 
upheaval.  To  trace  the  development  of  his 
mind  during  this  difificult  period  of  test  and 
strain  is  for  the  time  being  at  least  impossible, 
no  such  data  as  we  have  before  us  in  the  pub- 
lished memoir  and  letters  of  Clough  having  in 
Arnold's  case  as  yet  been  given  to  the  world.' 
But  to  the  influence  exerted  upon  his  own  life, 
as  upon  the  lives  of  so  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries, by  the  personality  and  subtle  power 
of  Newman,  he  bore  emphatic  testimony  when 
towards  the  close  of  his  career  he  came  to 
speak  of  the  voices  that  were  in  the  air,  inspir- 
ing, warning,  counselling,  during  his  under- 
graduate days.     *'  Who  could  resist,"  he  writes, 

'  It  is  with  a  certain  regret  that  we  find  ourselves  obliged  to 
leave  the  statement  in  the  text  standing,  after  perusal  of  the 
recently  published  two  volumes  of  Letters.  These  volumes 
open,  it  will  be  remembered,  with  the  year  1848,  when  Arnold 
was  already  twenty-six  years  of  age,  and  had  just  been  ap- 
pointed private  secretary  to  Lord  Lansdownc.  The  light 
they  tlinnv  upon  the  particular  and  critical  period  of  his  life 
now  under  discussion,  is,  therefore,  very  slight  indeed. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  l6l 

in  one  of  his  most  beautiful  prose  passages, 
"the  charm  of  that  spiritual  apparition,  gliding 
in  the  dim  afternoon  light  through  the  aisles 
of  St.  Mary's,  rising  into  the  pulpit,  and  then, 
in  the  most  entrancing  of  voices,  breaking  the 
silence  with  words  and  thoughts  which  were  a 
religious  music — subtle,  sweet,  mournful.  I 
seem  to  hear  him  still  saying — '  After  the  fever 
of  life,  after  weariness  and  sickness,  fightings 
and  despondings,  languor  and  fretfulness,  strug- 
gling and  succeeding,  after  all  the  changes  and 
chances  of  this  troubled,  unhealthy  state,  at 
length  comes  death,  at  length  the  white  throne 
of  God,  at  length  the  beatific  vision.'  "  '  Who, 
indeed,  could  resist  such  personal  magic  as 
this  ?  It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  the  ap- 
peal that  such  an  influence  as  Newman's  must 
have  made  to  the  strongly-developed  religious 
side  of  Arnold's  nature.  But  the  effect  of  the 
great  ecclesiastic's  teaching,  however  profound 
it  may  have  been  at  the  time,  did  not  and 
could  not  prove  of  enduring  character.  In 
later  years  he  could  insist  upon  the  beauty  and 
sweetness,  and  more  than  these,  upon  the 
strength  and  persistency  of  the  Oxford  tradi- 
tion, and  boldly  point  to  the  protest  which  the 
Tractarian  movement  had  made,  and  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  as  he  believed,  successfully  made, 
against  the  philistine  rawness  and  crudity  of 
English  middle-class  liberalism.'     But  the  lines 

>  Lecture  on  Emerson,  in  Discourses  in  America, 
'^  Culture  and  Anarchy,  Chap.  i. 


1 62         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

which   this   movement   had    followed    Arnold 
could  not  adopt ;  and  in  his  case,  as  in  the  case 
of  so  many  others,  the  inevitable  reaction  was 
not  long  delayed.     Thrown  back  upon  himself 
for  guidance  and  direction,  he  thus  found  him- 
self at  length  taking  up  the  skeptic's  position.  ; 
It  became   his  business  to  try  the  grounds  of 
faith  and  hope  ;  to  cast  aside  out  of  the  world's 
great  heritage  of  spiritual  tradition  much  that 
he  realized  to  be  no  longer  tenable  ;    and  to 
fortify  himself  for  the  acceptance  of  a  great 
mass  of  new  facts  and  theories  to  which,  had  it 
been  possible,  he  would  willingly  have  closed 
his    eyes.      In    later   years,  in  Literature  and 
Dogma  and  God  and  the  Bible,  he  was  to  make 
a  definite    attempt    towards    the    solution    of 
some  of  the  most  momentous  problems  of  the 
age ;  offering  these  works  as  his  own  contribu- 
tion to  the  new  religious  synthesis  of  which  he 
early  came  to  feel  that  we  are  in  pressing  need. 
It    is   natural   that    such    constructive    efforts, 
vague  and   unsatisfactory  as   to  most  critics, 
orthodox  and  heterodox  alike,  they  must  neces- 
sarily seem  to  be,  should  to  their  author  him- 
self have  brought  something  of  the  rest  and 
peace  only  to  be  found  in  settled  faith.'     But 

'Mr.  Samuel  Wacldinyton  writes:  "I  possess  a  photo- 
graph of  him  [Arnold]  taken  nearly  thirty  years  ago,  and  the 
expression  is  more  grave  and  iriste  than  that  his  features 
usually  wore  in  the  later  years  of  his  life."  In  The  Poets  and 
Poetry  of  the  Century,  ed.  by  A.  H.  Miles  ;  Vol.  Kingsley  to 
Thomson,  pp.  95,  96. 


MA  TTHE  W  ARNOLD.  1 63 

before  they  could  be  put  forth,  Arnold  had  to 
pass  through  a  long  period  of  ferment,  uncer- 
tainty, and  dejection  ;  and  it  was  out  of  this 
period,  as  we  have  said,  that  the  greater  part  of 
his  poetry  came.  To  catch  the  full  meaning 
of 

"  the  undertone  that  flows 
So  calmly  sad  through  all  his  stately  lays,"  ' 

we  must,  therefore,  try  to  understand  the 
condition  of  his  mind  during  this  time — his 
temper  and  spiritual  outlook  ;  since  in  compre- 
hension of  these  things  alone  will  be  found  the 
explanation  of  many  of  the  predominant  char- 
acteristics of  his  verse. 

And  here  once  again  our  simplest  course  will 
be  to  set  Arnold  in  comparison  with  Clough, 
for  the  two  men  met  the  changes  and  problems 
of  their  time  with  fundamentally  the  same  kind 
of  response.  We  have  laid  stress  upon  the  fine 
sanity  of  Clough's  mind,  upon  the  keenness  of 
his  intellect,  his  hatred  of  illusion,  his  single  eye 
for  truth,  his  unflinching  courage,  his  undevi- 
ating  honesty.  All  these  admirable  qualities 
will  be  found  equally  developed  in  the  character 
of  his  better-known  friend.  Arnold,  too,  was  a 
seeker  after  truth,  impatient  of  sham,  subter- 
fuge, and  mysticism,  intolerant  of  the  vague, 
the  fanciful,  the  far-fetched ;  determined  to 
stand  face  to  face  with  fact.     As  Mr.  William 

'  Principal  J.  C.  Shairp,  quoted  in  same  volume,  p.  86. 


164         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

Watson  has  written  of  him,  he  "  brooked  no  dis- 
guise." '  Intensely  aHve  to  the  changing  order 
of  the  world,  to  the  gradual  break-up  of  the 
old,  and  the  slow  and  painful  incoming  of 
the  new,  he  realized  that  in  the  midst  of  all  the 
upheaval  of  such  a  period  of  transition,  there 
was  but  one  safe  and  manly  course — to  stand 
firm,  adhere  to  reality,  and  accept  the  issue  be 
that  issue  what  it  might.  From  the  very  out- 
set of  his  career,  therefore,  his  attitude  was 
definitely  taken  up.  He  knew  that  one  cannot 
get  rid  of  the  influences  of  the  time-spirit  by 
turning  one's  back  upon  them,  with  Keats  and 
Rossetti,  or  attacking  them  with  all  the  elo- 
quence of  vituperation  with  Ruskin  and  Car- 
lyle.  For  the  time-spirit  and  its  doings,  as  he 
himself  phrased  it,  he  professed  the  most  pro- 
found respect — in  other  words,  he  recognized 
the  inevitableness  of  the  century's  movements 
in  speculation  and  in  society,  of  the  lapse  of 
ancient  creeds,  of  the  influx  of  new  knowledge, 
ideals,  fashions  of  life,  habits  of  thought. 

"  For  rigorous  teachers  seized  my  youth 
And  purged  its  faith  and  trimmed  its  fire  ; 
Show'd  me  the  high  white  star  of  truth, 
There  bade  me  gaze  and  there  aspire."  : 

thus  could  he  write  of  his  earlier  discipline  in 
a  poem    to   which   we   shall    have  occasion   to 

'  In  Lalcham  Churchyard, 


MA  T THE  ir  A RNOLD.  1 6 5 

refer  more  at  length  directly  in  another  con- 
nection.' With  such  noble  singleness  of  pur- 
pose, fortitute,  and  consistency,  did  he  accept 
the  mark  of  this  high  calling,  that  the  proud 
words  put  into  the  mouth  of  his  Empedocles 
may  fitly  be  applied  to  himself: 

"  Yea,  I  take  myself  to  witness. 
That  I  have  loved  no  darkness, 
Sophisticated  no  truth, 
Nursed  no  delusion, 
Allow'd  no  fear  !  " 

We  have  spoken  of  the  intellectual  differences 
separating  the  elder  from  the  younger  Arnold. 
Yet  Matthew  none  the  less  shows  himself  his 
father's  son  in  his  desire  to  keep  close  to  prac- 
tical life,  in  the  simple,  straightforwardness  of 
his  mental  processes,  and  in  his  constantly- 
expressed  distrust  of  mysticism,  vagueness,  and 
unintelligibility.  His  reiterated  disclaimer  of 
philosophic  talent  or  consistency,  his  curious 
dislike  of  elaborate  metaphysical  systems,  his 
everlasting  insistence  upon  the  fact  that  while 
he  is  discussing  politics,  or  theology,  or  social 
theories,  he  is  all  the  while  merely  a  plain  man 
talking  plainly  to  plain  folk;  all  these  familiar 
characteristics  of  his  later  work  will  occur  to 
every  reader  as  illustrations  to  the  present 
point.     Studiously  uapedantic  in  thought,  and 

*  Stanzas  from  the  Grande  Chartreuse. 


1 66        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

almost  affectedly  unacademic  in  style,  the  real 
Arnold  thus  revealed  to  us  has  scarcely  even  a 
shadowy  likeness  to  the  mythical  Arnold  of 
popular  thought — the  Oxford  fine  gentleman, 
half-scholar,  half-dandy  ;  prophet  of  the  kid- 
glove  persuasion,  as  the  Daily  Telegraph  con- 
ceived him  ;  elegant  and  spurious  Jeremiah, 
nursing  his  own  melancholy,  prattling  of  his 
new  culture,  and  holding  himself  severely  apart 
from  the  common  herd,  as  he  lives  in  the  minds 
of  many  others.  That  Arnold  himself,  by  rea- 
son of  his  aristocratic  airs  and  occasional  super- 
cilious mannerisms,  was  not  largely  responsible 
for  the  existence  of  this  legendary  distortion  of 
his  individuality,  cannot  indeed  be  maintained  ; 
but  it  is  evident  that  a  very  small  amount  of 
sympathetic  study  of  his  writings — an  amount 
sufficient  to  take  one  below  the  surface  and 
into  the  deep  earnest  undercurrent  of  his  work 
— is  enough  to  explode  the  vulgar  myth  and 
establish  the  reality  once  for  all  in  its  stead. 

It  is  the  highest  praise  that  Arnold  can  find 
for  Sophocles,  "  the  mellow  glory  of  the  Attic 
stage,"  that  endowed  with  "even-balanced  soul," 
he  "saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole  "  ; '  as  it 
is  the  highest  praise  that  he  can  find  for  Goethe 
that  he  was  strong  "  with  a  spirit  free  from 
mists  and   sane   and  clear."''     Such    sentences 

'Sonnet    To  a  Ericnd—''  Who  prop,   thou  ask'st,  in  these 
bad  clays  my  niintl  ?  " 

^  Stanzas  in  Memory  of  the  A  iithor  of  Obermann. 


AfA  T THE  W  ARNOLD.  1 67 

as  these  bring  us  directly  upon  the  enduring 
purpose,  the  fixed  and  central  aim,  of  Arnold's 
intellectual  self-discipline.  To  see  life  steadily, 
and  to  see  it  whole  ;  to  preserve  his  mental  and 
moral  balance  in  the  face  of  the  most  urgent 
and  perplexing  external  conditions  ;  to  keep 
the  atmosphere  of  his  thought  unobstructed  by 
prejudices,  premature  judgments,  figments  of 
fancy,  tricks  of  feeling,  delusions  of  sense  ;  such 
from  first  to  last  remained  the  dominant  ideal  of 
his  entire  career.  The  pursuit  of  such  an  ideal 
might  mean  the  unlearning  of  much,  the  resig- 
nation of  much;'  it  might  force  upon  the  un- 
ready shoulders  a  burden  of  heavy  thought 
well-nigh  too  great  to  be  borne  ;  facile  and  com- 
fortable doctrines  of  the  older  faith  might  in 
consequence  have  to  be  replaced  by  new  con- 
ceptions which  for  the  time  being  might  well 
seem  hard,  gloomy, and  uninspiring;  but  it  was 
no  business  of  the  earnest  truth-seeker  to  pause 
and  count  the  cost  of  his  undertaking.  Reali_t^ 
must  be  had  at  any  price.  ^Without  reality 
there_££aild  be  no  salvation. 

Here,  then,  is  the  first  point  to  be  noted.  In 
the  case  of  Arnold,  as  in  the  case  of  Clough, 
we  have  to  do  with  a  man  who  will  play  no 
tricks  upon  himself,  cherish  no  illusion,  tolerate 
no  special  pleading — with  a  man  whose  prime 
business  is  with  fact,  and  whose  first  question 
in  regard  to  any  new  development  of  theory  or 

'See  Statizas from  the  Grande  Charlrcttsc,  stanza  13. 


1 68         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

practice  will  bo,  not  is  it  pleasant,  or  comfort- 
able, or  easy,  but  is  it  true,  is  it  right  ?  "A 
man,  finally,  so  deeply  and  evidently  in  earnest, 
filled  with  so  awful  a  sense  of  the  reality  of 
things  and  of  the  madness  of  self-deception," — 
in  such  words  he  characterizes  Bishop  Butler,' 
and  in  such  words  may  we  in  turn  characterize 
Arnold  himself.  And  twice  he  quotes  *  from 
this  same  eighteenth-century  thinker,  and  each 
time  with  openly  expressed  admiration,  a 
sentence  which  may  well  be  taken  as  the  key 
to  his  own  intellectual  position.  "  Things  are 
what  they  are,  and  the  consequences  of  them 
will  be  what  they  will  be;  why,  then,  should 
we  desire  to  be  deceived?  "  "  In  that  uncom- 
promising sentence,"  so  runs  his  comment,  "  is 
surely  the  right  and  salutary  maxim  for  both  in- 
dividuals and  nations,"  In  that  uncompromis- 
ing sentence  certainly  lay  the  accepted  maxim 
of  his  own  life. 

To  illustrate  what  we  have  above  said  by 
lengthy  quotations  from  Arnold's  numerous 
writings,  would  be  to  commit  ourselves  to  an 
unnecessary  expenditure  of  space  ;  but  a  single 
reference  may  be  made  to  sharpen  those  quali- 
ties in  the  man's  intellectual  make-up  on  which 
we  here  especially  wish  to  insist.     In  one  of  his 

'  Bishop  Butler  and  the  Zeitgeist  {Last  Essays  on  Church 
and  Religion,  p.  237). 

*  In  the  essay  just  mentioned,  and  in  the  lecture  on  Num- 
bers. 


MA  TTHE  W  A RNOLD.  1 69 

later  essays,  the  study  on  Amiel  and  his  journal 
(first  published  in  1877),  we  have  an  excellent 
opportunity  of  testing  the  fundamental  lucidity 
and  saneness  of  his  mind.  There  was  much  in 
Amiel  that  he  could  revere ;  much  also  that 
seemed  to  him  empty  and  unavailing  ;  and  in 
his  personal  estimation  of  what  he  found  ad- 
mirable and  of  what  he  found  unsatisfactory  we 
have  the  clearest  declaration  of  his  own  atti- 
tude, outlook,  and  aims.  He  quotes  sundry 
passages  from  the  journal  by  way  of  exhibiting 
what  admirers  were  accustomed  to  praise  as 
Amiel's  "  speculative  intuition,"  and  of  which 
the  following  only  can  be  here  reproduced  as  a 
sample : 

"  This  psychological  reinvolution  is  an  an- 
ticipation of  death  ;  it  represents  the  life  be- 
yond the  grave,  the  return  to  Scheol,  the  soul 
fading  into  the  world  of  ghosts  or  descending 
into  the  region  of  Die  Mutter ;  it  implies  the 
simplification  of  the  individual  who,  allowing 
all  the  accidents  of  personality  to  evaporate, 
exists  henceforward  only  in  the  invisible  state, 
the  state  of  point,  of  potentiality,  of  pregnant 
nothingness.  Is  not  this  the  true  definition  of 
mind?  Is  not  mind,  dissociated  from  space 
and  time,  just  this?  Its  development,  past  or 
future,  is  contained  in  it  just  as  a  curve  is  con- 
tained in  its  algebraical  formula.  This  nothing 
is  an  all.  This  piinctuin  without  dimensions  is 
2l  piinctum  salicnsT 


170        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

Upon  such  a  passage  what  is  Arnold's  criti- 
cism ?  "French  critics  throw  up  their  hands 
in  dismay  at  the  violence  which  the  German- 
ised Amiel,  propounding  his  speculative  philoso- 
phy, often  does  to  the  French  language.  My 
objection  is  rather  that  such  speculative  philoso- 
phy as  that  of  which  I  have  been  quoting 
specimens,  has  no  value,  is  perfectly  futile. 
And  Amiel's  journal  contains  too  much  of  it." 

And  now  set  over  against  these  adverse  com- 
ments upon  what  he  finds  futile  and  of  no 
value  in  the  journal,  his  entire  endorsement  of 
another  aspect  of  Amiel's  thought — his  forti- 
tude in  confronting  actuality,  his  high  sense  of 
the  sanctity  of  fact.  He  quotes  the  following 
sentences : 

"  Pious  fiction  is  still  fiction.  Truth  has  su- 
perior rights.  The  world  must  adapt  itself  to 
truth,  not  truth  to  the  world.  Copernicus  up- 
set the  astronomy  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  so  much 
the  worse  for  the  astronomy.  The  Everlasting 
Gospel  is  revolutionizing  the  churches ;  what 
does  it  matter?  " 

And  his  judgment  is  as  significant  as  it  is 
brief:  "This  is  water  to  our  mill,  as  the  Ger- 
mans say,  indeed."  Arnold's  own  position 
could  hardly  be  more  clearly  defined.  It  is  the 
position  of  a  man  whose  aim  is  ever  to  see 
things  as  they  really  are  ;  of  a  man  who  in  the 
turmoil  and  restlessness  of  youth  '  clung  to  this 

'  See  his  interesting  reference  to  this  period  in  his  essay  on 
George  Sand  (.l//.r<v/ yr.fMi'j,  jip.  241,  242). 


MA  TTHE IV  A RNOLD.  1  7 1 

purpose  as  his  mainstay  and  guiding  power ; 
and  who,  in  maturer  years,  when  he  came  to 
write  of  the  effects  even  now  being  wrought  in 
the  midst  of  our  present-day  world  by  that 
"  one  irresistible  force  .  .  .  tlie  modern  spirit,'' 
could  thus  summarize  his  opinion  of  contem- 
porary movements,  and  our  own  relation  to 
them  : 

"  Undoubtedly  we  are  drawing  on  towards 
great  changes ;  and  for  every  nation  the  thing 
most  needful  is  to  discern  clearly  its  own  con- 
dition, in  order  to  know  in  what  particular  way 
it  may  best  meet  them.  Openness  and  flexi- 
bility of  mind  are  at  such  a  time  the  first  of 
virtues.  Be  ye  perfect,  said  the  Founder  of 
Christianity;  I  count  not  myself  to  have  appre- 
hended, said  its  greatest  apostle.  Perfection 
will  never  be  reached,  but  to  recognize  a  period 
of  transformation  when  it  comes,  and  to  adapt 
themselves  honestly  and  rationally  to  its  laws, 
is  perhaps  the  nearest  approach  to  perfection 
of  which  men  and  nations  are  capable.  No 
habits  or  attachments  should  prevent  their  try- 
ing to  do  this  ;  nor  indeed  in  the  long  run,  can 
they.  Human  thought,  which  made  all  insti- 
tutions, inevitably  saps  them,  resting  only  in 
that  which  is  absolute  and  eternal."  ' 

But  now  comes  the  question  which,  turn 
whither  he  would,  haunted  Arnold  during  his 
entire  life ;  inability  to  answer  which  satisfac- 
torily to   himself  lay  at  the  root  of  his  early 

'  Dc'THocrary  {in  JMix^d  Essays,  p.  35). 


172         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

hopelessness  and  unrest  ;  while  efforts  to  an- 
swer it  in  its  various  relations  and  bearings 
constituted  the  final  cause  of  his  later  con- 
structive work.  Given  all  these  changes  in  our 
nineteenth-century  world — the  widespread  col- 
lapse of  the  ancient  foundations  of  faith,  the 
break-up  of  venerable  institutions,  the  modifi- 
cation of  long-fixed  habits,  the  rise  of  entirely- 
new  social  and  industrial  conditions — given  all 
those  facts  which  we  have  in  mind  when  we 
speak  of  the  incoming  of  the  modern  spirit — 
and  how  can  we  relate  them  "  to  our  sense  for 
conduct,  to  our  sense  for  beauty";'  what,  in 
other  words,  shall  we  say  of  them  when  we 
come  to  look  at  them  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  spiritual  man  ?  Here,  for  Arnold,  lay  the 
ultimate  problem,  towards  the  solution  of 
which  all  knowledge  was  to  be  regarded  as 
merely  subsidiary.  Let  us  note  carefully  what 
he  has  to  say  in  this  connection  about  some  of 
the  new  theories  of  science,  and  our  need, 
sooner  or  later,  of  taking  our  emotional  bear- 
ings in  respect  of  them.  He  has  been  referring 
to  Darwin's  discussion  of  the  origin  of  man,  and 
Huxley's  statement  of  the  growth  of  our  sense 
of  law  and  order  in  nature  ;  and  he  continues: 
"  Interesting,  indeed,  these  results  of  science 
are,  important  they  are,  and  we  should  all  of 
us  be  acquainted  with  them.  But  Avhat  I  now 
wish  you  to  mark  is,  that  we  are  still,  when  they 

'  Literature  and  Science,  in  Discourses  in  America,  p.  103. 


MA  T  THE  IV  A  RNOLD.  1 7  3 

are  propounded  to  us  and  we  receive  them,  we 
are  still  in  the  sphere  of  intellect  and  knowl- 
edge. And  for  the  generality  of  men  there  will 
be  found,  I  say,  to  arise  when  they  have  duly 
taken  in  the  proposition  that  their  ancestor 
was  '  a  hairy  quadruped  furnished  with  a  tail 
and  pointed  ears,  probably  arboreal  in  his 
habits,'  there  will  be  found  to  arise  an  invinci- 
ble desire  to  relate  this  proposition  to  the  sense 
in  us  for  conduct,  and  to  the  sense  in  us  for 
beauty.  But  this  the  men  of  science  will  not 
do  for  us,  and  will  hardly  even  profess  to  do. 
They,  will  give  us  other  pieces  of  knowledge, 
other  facts  about  other  animals  and  their  an- 
cestors, or  about  plants  or  about  stones,  or 
about  stars,  and  they  may  finally  bring  us  to 
those  great '  general  conceptions  of  the  universe, 
which  are  forced  upon  us  all,'  says  Professor 
Huxley,  '  by  the  progress  of  physical  science.' 
But  still  it  will  be  knowledge  only  which  they 
give  us;  knowledge  not  put  for  us  into  relation 
with  our  sense  for  conduct,  our  sense  for 
beauty,  and  touched  with  emotion  by  being  so 
put ;  not  thus  put  for  us,  and  therefore,  to  the 
majority  of  mankind,  after  a  certain  while, 
unsatisfying,  wearying." 

And  then,  after  a  parenthetical  discussion  of 
the  great  mediaeval  universities  and  their  aims, 
in  answer  to  the  strictures  of  Professor  Hux- 
ley, he  thus  proceeds : 

"  But  now,  says  Professor  Huxley,  concep- 


174        STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

tions  of  the  universe  fatal  to  the  notions  held 
by  our  forefathers  have  been  forced  upon  us 
by  physical  science.     Grant  to  him  that  they 
are  thus  fatal,  that  the  new  conceptions  must 
and    will    soon    become    current    everywhere, 
and  that  everyone  will  finally  perceive  them  to 
be  fatal  to  the  beliefs  of  our  forefathers.     The 
need    of    humane    letters,   as    they    are   truly 
called,  because  they  serve  the  paramount  de- 
sire in  men  that  good  should  be  forever  present 
to  them — the  need  of  humane  letters  to  estab- 
lish a  relation    between    the  new  conceptions 
and  our  instinct   for  beauty,   our  instinct  for 
conduct,  is  only   the  more  visible.     The  Mid- 
dle  Ages  could   do  without    humane   letters, 
as  it  could  do  without  the  study   of  nature, 
because  its  supposed  knowledge  was  made  to 
engage  its  emotions  so  powerfully.     Grant  that 
the  supposed  knowledge  disappears,  its  power 
of  being  made  to  engage  the  emotions  will  of 
course  disappear  along  with  it, — but  the  emo- 
tions themselves,  and    their  claim   to    be  en- 
gaged  and  satisfied,  will  remain.     Now,  if  we 
find  by  experience  that   humane   letters  have 
an    undeniable    power  of    engaging  the   emo- 
tions, the  importance  of  humane  letters  in  a 
man's  training  becomes  not  less,  but  greater, 
in   proportion    to    the  success  of  modern  sci- 
ence   in    extirpating  what  it  calls   '  mediaeval 
thinking.' "  ' 

'  Literature  attd  Science  {Discourses  in  America),  pp.  i  lo-i  8. 


MA  T  THE  IV  A  RNOLD.  1 7  5 

Arnold's  view  of  the  value  of  humane  letters 
in  relating  mere  knowledge  to  our  sense  for 
conduct,  our  sense  for  beauty,  may  be  found 
stated  at  length  in  the  lecture  from  which 
these  citations  are  made  ;  into  these  matters  of 
detail  we  cannot  follow  him  now.  What  we 
here  have  to  emphasize  is  the  fact  that  the  ' 
problems  of  modern  life  assumed  always  in  his 
hands  these  ulterior  forms.  With  him,  as  with 
Clough,  a  fine,  lucid,  intellectual  nature  was 
offset  by  a  religious  nature  equally  fine,  equally 
strong,  equally  insistent.  To  see  things  as' 
they  are,  knowing  that  we  must  adjust  our- 
selves to  reality,  and  that  there  is  no  madness 
comparable  to  the  obstinacy  of  self-delusion, 
this,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  corner-stone,  the 
firm  foundation-principle  of  his  thought.  But 
as  he  has  just  told  us,  the  emotional  part  of 
our  nature  insists  upon  its  claim  to  be  en- 
gaged and  satisfied  ;  it  is  permanent  and 
urgent ;  nor,  save  in  its  full  and  adequate  sat- 
isfaction, can  any  lasting  happiness  be  found. 
Hence,  the  supreme  question — How  will  the 
modern  spirit  and  its  results  in  life  and  thought 
affect  this  permanent  and  urgent  part  of  our 
nature  ? 

And  now  we  are  in  a  position  to  understand 
that  the  unrest  and  dejection  of  Arnold's 
poetry^  like  the  unrest  and  dejection  of 
Clough's  poetry,  find  their  explanation  for  us 
in  the  writer's  inability  to  relate  the  changing 


176         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

dispensation  of  the  civilized  world  to  his  im- 
Ijcrative  sense  for  conduct  and  for  beauty — or, 
as  we  should  put  it,  in  his  inability  to  translate 
the  outworkinp^s  of  tho  modern  spirit  into 
t_crins  of  the  spiritnril  ''^'-  The  attitude  of 
evasion  adopted  by  Keats  and  Rossetti,  the 
solutions  offered  by  Newman  and  Carlyle,' 
were  for  him  impossible  ;  but  during  the  period 
of  which  his  verse  is  the  record,  the  weight  of 
the  world's  problems  bore  all  the  more  heavily 
upon  his  mind.  The  brain  was  steady,  but 
the  heart  was  not  at  peace.  His  life  was  thus 
shaken  at  its  foundations;  and  uncertainty, 
sadness,  the  feeling  of  loss,  craving,  and  futil- 
ity, became  the  ever-recurring  themes  of  nearly 
all  his  song. 

III. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Stedman,'^ 
that  in  Matthew  Arnold  we  have  an  "  instance 
of  an  introspective  nature  overcoming  the  pur- 
pose formed  by  critical  judgment."  In  other 
words,  Arnold's  poetic  genius  and  creed  were 
in  direct  conflict,  and  the  former  fortunately 
won  the  day.  For  a  distinct  statement  of  his 
theoretical  position  we  have  but  to  go  back  to 
the  memorable  preface  to  the  second  edition  of 
his  earlier  poems,  published  in   1854.     Trained 

'  See  what  he  says  of  Newman  at  the  beginning,  and  of 
Carlyle  towards  the  close,  of  his  lecture  on  Emerson. 
^  The  Nature  and  Elements  of  Poetry,  pp.  133-36. 


MA  T  THE  IV  A  RNOLD.  I  /  7 

in  the  school  of  Goethe  and  the  Greeks,  he 
there  definitely  enunciates  his  belief  that  objec- 
tive art  alone  possesses  permanent  value,  that 
human  action  yields  the  one  fitting  material 
for  the  muse.  Subjective  poetry — the  poetry 
of  self-expression — is,  as  such,  upon  a  lower 
plane  of  production.  Art  must  be  preferred  to 
ourselves.  And  since  modern  verse  is  coming 
to  be  marked  and  marred  by  ever-increasing 
subjectivity,  the  one  safe  course  for  the  writer 
of  to-day  is  to  hold  fast  to  the  ancients,  and 
discipline  himself  upon  the  models  furnished 
by  their  characteristic  works. 

It  was  in  accordance  with  this  theory  that 
most  of  Arnold's  more  ambitious  poems  were 
produced — the  heroic  episodes  of  Balder  Dead 
and  SoJirab  and  Riisttun,  and  the  romantic 
story  of  Tristram  and  Isciilt.  It  cannot  be 
maintained  that  in  any  one  of  these  produc- 
tions the  author  scores  a  thorough  and  de- 
cided success.  Certainly  the  last-named  work 
is  the  very  reverse  of  successful ;  while,  as  for 
the  others,  we  entirely  endorse  Mr.  Stedman's 
judgment  when  he  describes  them  as  ''tours 
de  force  of  intellect  and  constructive  taste." 
Beautiful  as  they  are  in  their  way,  with  their 
painstaking  polish,  their  limpidity  of  diction, 
their  sculpturesque  clearness  of  outline,  they 
none  the  less  serve  to  show  us  that  under 
the  influence  of  a  carefully-considered  critical 

theory,  Arnold  deliberately  placed  himself  in  a 
13 


178         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

by-way  of  experiment  which,  consistently  fol- 
lowed, would  have  led  to  the  practical  nullifica- 
tion of  his  true  genius  and  power.  Working 
in  the  direction  which  he  had  thus  mapped  out 
for  himself,  he  produced  poems  of  a  high  order 
of  merit — poems  marked  by  skill,  delicate  art, 
distinction  ;  but  nevertheless,  scholar's  work, 
academic,  rather  laborious,  and  deficient  in  spon- 
taneity, vitalit)-,  the  "note  of  the  inevitable." 
With  such  offerings  as  these,  Arnold  would 
surely  have  gained  repute;  but  his  interest  for 
us,  for  the  large  majority  of  readers  of  poetry, 
would  after  all  have  been  a  narrow  one.  He 
certainly  would  not  have  become  what  a  grace- 
ful and  discriminating  critic  has  pronounced 
him  to  be,  "  to  those  who  care  for  him  at  all 
.    .    .    the  most  useful  poet  of  his  day."  ' 

It  was  fortunate  therefore,  as  we  have  said, 
that  though  by  theory  wedded  to  the  ideals  of 
objective  art,  Arnold  in  practice  allowed  his 
temperament  for  the  most  part  to  have  free 
play,  for  his  really  successful  poetry  belongs  to 
the  school  he  condemned — the  school  of  re- 
served yet  thoroughly  honest  self-delineation. 
Balder  Dead  and  SoJirab  and  Rust  iini  will  always 
secure  sympathetic  and  appreciative  readers 
among  the  studious  class  ;  but  it  is  by  reason, 
not  of  these  works,  but  of  poems  like  Dover 
Beach,  the  Stan::as  from  the  Grande  Char- 
treuse, Buried  Life,  Kensington  Gardens,  and 
'  Augustine  Birrell,  Res  JudicatiT,  p.  192. 


MA  T  THE  W  A  RNOL  D.  1 79 

Others  belonging  to  the  same  general  category 
— poems  full  of  reflection,  and  throughout 
highly  personal — that  Arnold  holds  his  place 
unmistakably  among  the  representative  poets 
of  our  century. 

We  get  nearer  to  the  really  vital  element, 
the  true  governing  principle  of  Arnold's  verse, 
when  we  turn  from  his  early  manifesto  concern- 
ing the  canons  of  art  to  his  later  discussions  of 
the  aims  and  objects  of  poetry.  Everyone  is 
familiar  with  his  famous  and  much  canvassed 
definition  of  literature  at  large  as  criticism  of 
life,  and  of  poetry  in  particular  as  "  a  criticism 
of  life  under  the  conditions  fixed  for  such  criti- 
cism by  the  laws  of  poetic  truth  and  poetic 
beauty  " — a  definition  which,  as  has  been  well 
said,  itself  stands  in  need  of  a  good  deal  of  de- 
fining. Equally  familiar  is  his  often  reiterated 
affirmation  of  the  high  place,  power,  and  des- 
tiny of  poetry,  as  when  for  instance  he  writes 
— "  In  poetry  .  .  .  the  spint-QJ-Qiir-.  race 
will  find  .  .  .  asJUmp  goes  nn  ^f  ^l  pc^  f^th^** 
helps  fail,  its  consolation  and  stay." '  Arnold 
indeed  was  never  weary  ot  insisting  that  poetry 
is  to  be  rightly  held  as  a  profoundly  earnest, 
important,  and  enduring  thing,  and  that  it  is 
to  poetry  that  mankind  will  more  and  more 
have  to  turn  "  to  interpret  life  for  us,  to  con- 
sole,   to    sustain    us."^      Poetry    for   him    was 

^  T/ie  Study  of  Poetry  (iia  Essays  in  Criticism ,  2d  Series,  p.  5). 
2  Ibid.,  p.  2. 


l8o         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

"  nothing  less  than  the  most  perfect  speech  of 
man,  that  in  which  he  comes  nearest  to  being 
able  to  utter  the  truth."  '  Such  was  his  theory 
of  the  meaning  and  obligations  of  poetry,  and 
his  own  practice  was  consistently  in  harmony 
with  it.  That  poetry  should  be  characterized  by 
the  "  noble  and  profound  application  of  ideas 
to  life  "  ;"  that  it  should  be  moral  in  the  largest 
and  deepest  sense  of  that  rather  uncertain 
term  ; '  that  it  should  deal  directly  with  life,* 
which  is  itself  three  parts  made  up  of  conduct; 
and  that  it  should  be  based  on  sound  and  sub- 
stantial subject-matter  ; '"  such  were  the  cardinal 
principles  of  his  doctrine  of  poetry'.  And  by 
strict  and  conscientious  adherence  to  such 
principles  Arnold's  own  poetic  production  is 
everywhere  distinguished.     His  verse  contains 

'  Wordsworth  (in  Essays  in  Criticism,  2d  Series,  p. 
12S). 

**  Ibid.,  p.  140. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  142. 

''Ibid.,  p.  147. 

^  Instance  Arnold's  attitude  towards  Shelley,  the  "  incurable 
want"  in  whose  poetry  he  holds  to  be  the  want  of  "  a  sound 
subject-matter,"  with  its  consequent  fault  of  unsubstantiality 
( Words-worth,  in  Essays,  2d  series,  p.  165)  ;  and  compare  the 
entire  essay  on  Shelley  in  the  same  volume,  with  its  famous 
description  of  that  poet  as  a  "beautiful  and  ineffectual  angel, 
beating  in  the  void  his  luminous  wings  in  vain."  It  will  be 
remembered  also  that  Arnold  expressed  dissatisfaction  with 
Wordsworth's  Immortality  Ode,  because  its  central  idea, 
though  "  of  undeniable  beauty  as  a  jilay  of  fancy,"  had  not 
"  the  character  of  ])uctic  truth  of  tiie  best  kind" — that  is,  it 
had  "no  real  solidity." 


MA  TTHE  W  A RNOLD.  1 8 1 

a  "  noble  and  profound  application  of  ideas  to 
life  "  ;  it  is  largely  and  deeply  moral ;  its  dom- 
inant note  is  the  note  of  conduct  ;  its  final 
question,  the  question  how  to  live  ;  its  subject- 
matter  throughout  eminently  sound  and  sub- 
stantial. 

■Thus  in  spite  of  all  theories  concerning  the  en- 
during value  of  objective  art,  and  the  relative 
worthlessness  of  poetry  of  the  self-delineative 
order  ;  in  spite  of  his  long  training  in  the  discip- 
line of  the  Greeks,  and  his  immense  and  often 
expressed  admiration  of  their  works,  Arnold  was 
the  last  to  pretend  that  the  present  hour,  with 
its  new  needs  and  its  new  ideals,  could  ever 
find  satisfaction  in  lifeless  imitations  of  the 
great  efforts  of  the  past.  He  believed,  indeed, 
that,  compared  with  the  Greek  poets  from  Pin- 
dar to  Sophocles,  all  other  writers  fall  short : — 
"  No  other  poets,"  he  declared,  "  have  lived  so 
much  by  the  imaginative  reason  ;  no  other 
poets  have  made  their  works  so  well  balanced  ; 
no  other  poets  have  so  well  satisfied  the  think- 
ing power,  have  so  well  satisfied  the  religious 
sense " ;  he  believed,  therefore,  that  these 
writers  remain  of  permanent  service  and  signifi- 
cance for  all  generations.  Yet  he  distinctly 
disclaimed  any  desire  to  set  them  up  "  as 
objects  of  blind  worship "  ;  and  just  -as  dis- 
tinctly maintained  that  "  the  present  has  to 
make  its  own^poetry,  and  not  even  Sophocles 
and  his  compeers,  any  more  than  Dante  and 


1 82         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

Shakespeare  are  enough  for  it."  '  Hence  we 
detect  in  all  his  best  and  truest  verse  the  char- 
acteristically modern  note.  One  thing  that 
attracted  him  especially  about  Marcus  Aurelius 
was  the  fact  that  Marcus  Aurelius  lived  and 
labored  in  a  state  of  society  modern  in  its  essen- 
tial features,  "  in  an  epoch  akin  to  our  own.'"* 
In  this  way  the  pagan  emperor  was  found  to 
possess  immense  superiority  of  interest  over  a 
man  like  St.  Louis.  "  St.  Louis  inhabits  an 
atmosphere  of  mediaeval  Catholicism,  which 
the  man  of  the  nineteenth  century  may  ad- 
mire, indeed,  may  even  passionately  wish  to 
inhabit,  but  which,  strive  as  he  will,  he  cannot 
really  inhabit."  Arnold's  nature  had  too  strong 
a  hold  upon  the  real  and  the  practical,  to  allow 
him  to  make  any  attempt  to  naturalize  himself 
as  a  citizen  of  the  past  world.  If  he  could  write, 
"the  future  of  poetry  is  immense,  because  in 
poetry,  when  it  is  worthy  of  its  high  destinies, 
our  race,  as  time  goes  on,  will  find  an  ever 
surer  and  surer  stay,"^  he  could  do  so  by 
reason  of  his  deep-rooted  faith  in  the  funda- 
mental and  vital  relation  of  true  poetry  to  men's 
actual  every-day  life.  The  poetry  of  the  pres- 
ent, to  be  alive,  to  be  real,  must  therefore  grow 
out  of  the  present,  and  be  fed  by  its  multifari- 

'  Pagan  and  Mediaval  Religious  Sentiment  (in  Essays  in 
Criticism,  1st  Series,  pp.  221-22). 

^  Marcus  Aurelius  (in  Essays  in  Criticism,  1st  Series,  p.  355). 
*  The  Study  0/ Poetry  (in  Essays,  2d.  Series,  p.  i). 


MA  T  THE  IV  A  RNOLD.  I  %l 

ous  streams  of  thought  and  feehng  ;  and  that 
part  of  the  production  of  Arnold  himself  which 
is  secure  of  immortality — the  part  in  which 
"  our  race,  as  time  goes  on,  will  find  an  ever 
surer  and  surer  stay,"  is  the  part  in  which  he 
has  allowed  his  genius  and  his  temperament  to 
take  their  natural  unimpeded  course. 


IV. 


If  there  is  one  poem  more  than  all  others  in' 
which  Arnold  may  be  said  to  have  given  us  a 
key  to  his  position,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
have  shown  us  how  acutely  that  position  was 
realized  by  him,  it  is  assuredly  the  splendid 
Stanzas  from  the  Grande  Chartreuse — a  pro 
duction  which,  indeed,  can  hardly  be  read  toc' 
often  or  too  carefully  as  an  exposition  of  the 
spiritual  conditions  of  the  man  and  his  tune 
Here  the  poet  finds  himself,  in  a  "  showery 
twilight  gray,"  a  visitor  "  to  the  Carthusians' 
world-famed  home  "  ;  and  we  notice  at  once 
that  Arnold's  interest  in  the  old  forms  and 
faiths  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  something  very 
different  from  the  interest  of  Rossetti.  Medi- 
aeval Catholicism  appealed  to  the  great  Pre- 
Raphaelite  master  upon  the  imaginative  or 
aesthetic  side  ;  he  loved  it  for  its  beauty,  its 
warmth,  its  picturesqueness,  its  romantic  as- 
sociations. Arnold,  on  the  other  hand,  was  pre- 
occupied with  and  absorbed  in  the  purely  reli- 


1 84         S  TUDIES  IN  IN TERPRE  TA  TION. 

gious  element — the  faith  and  hope  out  of  which 
this  ancient  Carthusian  brotherhood  had  grown, 
and  for  which  it  had  so  long  stood  as  a  visible 
and  palpable  symbol.  He  expressly  lingers 
over  every  detail  of  the  austerity  of  the  ascetic 
life  upon  which  he  has  so  suddenly  come  out 
of  the  tumultuous  and  restless  activity  of 
his  own  modern  world.  He  describes  for  us 
"  the  silent  courts,"  the  ''  humid  corridors,"  the 
"  cowl'd  forms  "  brushing  by  "  ghost-like  in  the 
deepening  night  " ;  "  the  chapel  where  no 
organ's  peal  invests  the  stern  and  naked 
prayer  "  ;  the  cells  with  their  knee-worn  floors  ; 
the  wooden  beds,  presently  to  become  the  cof- 
fins of  their  occupants.  Such  a  picture  con- 
tains little  indeed  to  arouse  the  interest  or  fire 
the  imagination  of  a  man  of  Rossetti's  temper ; 
but  with  Arnold  it  is  different.  His  quick  eye 
pierces  to  the  heart  of  this  strange,  alien  life  ; 
he  is  thrown  inward  upon  himself  at  the  mag- 
netic touch  of  a  faith  which,  no  matter  how 
meaninglessly  hideous  and  grotesque  and  per- 
verted may  now  seem  its  embodiments,  was 
once  full  of  vital  and  saving  value.  Then  it  is 
that  he  directly  questions  himself,  asking  what 
he  can  have  to  do  in  such  a  "  living  tomb."  Is 
not  his  presence  there  itself  conclusive  evidence 
of  his  want  of  loyalty  to  those  "  rigorous  teach- 
ers "  who  had  seized  his  youth,  and  at  whose 
behests  he  had  long  ago  "  so  much  unlearnt, 
so  much  resigned"?     But  he  answers  with  an 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  185 

emphatic  No.  He  is  interested  in  the  monas- 
tery and  its  inmates  as  a  Greek  might  have 
been  interested  when,  on  some  far  northern 
strand,  he  Hghted  unexpectedly  upon  a  "  fallen 
Runic  stone  "  : — "  for  both  were  faiths,  and 
both  are  gone."  And  then  come  the  solemn 
and  impressive  stanzas  in  which  Arnold  de- 
liberately defines  his  position  : 

"  Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead, 
The  other  powerless  to  be  born,' 
With  nowhere  yet  to  rest  my  head, 

Like  these  on  earth  I  wait  forlorn. 
Their  faith,  my  tears,  the  world  deride — 
I  come  to  shed  them  at  their  side. 

"  Oh,  hide  me  in  your  gloom  profound, 

Ye  solemn  seats  of  holy  pain  ! 
Take  me,  cowl'd  forms,  and  fence  me  round, 

Till  I  possess  my  soul  again. 
Till  free  my  thoughts  before  me  roll. 
Not  chafed  by  hourly  false  control." 

Why  then — to  put  for  ourselves  the  question 
which  forced  itself  upon  the  poet's  own  mind 
■ — why,  then,  does  Arnold  linger  among  the 
shadows  and  traditions  of  the  old  Carthusian 
monastery — he  a  skeptic  of  the  later  times,  for 
whom  the  beliefs  and  aspirations  of  the  Middle 

'  Compare  .the  almost  identical  phrase  in  the  sianzas  Ober- 
ina)in  Once  More  : 

"  But  now  the  old  is  out  of  date, 
The  new  is  not  yet  born. " 


1 86  .S- TUDIES  IN  IN  TERPRE  TA  TION. 

Ages  are  dead  beyond  all  possibility  of  resusci- 
tation ?  The  answer  is  simple.  It  is  because 
he  is  seeking  vainly  for  the  spiritual  comfort 
which  all  the  while  he  knows  he  can  never  find 
either  in  the  old  creed,  because  he  has  out- 
grown it,  or  in  the  new  thought,  because  he  has 
not  yet  emotionally  appropriated  it.  After  all 
that  has  been  accomplished  in  the  past,  the 
pangs  that  tortured  our  fathers  remain  as  an 
inheritance  to  us,  their  sons;  and  neither  by 
the  "  haughty  scorn "  of  Byron,  nor  by  the 
"  lovely  wail  "  of  Shelley,  nor  by  the  stern  sad 
moralizing  of  Senancour,  has  the  world  been 
enriched  with  the  means  of  lasting  hope  and 
salvation.  Hence,  though  the  poet  may  cling 
to  some  faith  in  the  future,  his  thought  con- 
cerning his  own  generation  rises  but  little 
above  the  dull  level  of  absolute  despair. 

"  Years  hence,  perhaps,  may  dawn  an  age, 
More  fortunate,  alas  !  than  we, 
Which  witliout  hardness  will  be  sage, 

And  gay  without  frivolity. 
Sons  of  the  world,  oh,  speed  those  years  ; 
But,  while  we  wait,  allow  our  tears  ! 

"Allow  them  !  we  admire  with  awe 

The  exulting  thunder  of  your  race  ; 
You  give  the  universe  your  law. 

You  triumph  over  time  and  space  ! 
Your  pride  of  life,  your  tireless  i)0wers. 
We  laud  them,  but  they  are  not  ours. 


MA  TTHE  W  ARNOLD.  1 8/ 

"  We  are  like  children  rear'd  in  shade 
Beneath  some  old-world  abbey  wall, 
Forgotten  in  a  forest-glade, 

And  secret  from  the  eyes  of  all. 
Deep,  deep  the  greenwood  round  them  waves, 
Their  abbey,  and  its  close  of  graves  !  " 

Along  with  this  highly  personal  and  charac- 
teristic poem  should  be  read  the  equally  per- 
sonal and  characteristic  Stanzas  in  Memory  of 
the Aicthor of  Obcrmann,  dsXcd  November,  1849. 
To  the  subtle  and  potent  influence  of  Senan- 
cour  upon  his  earlier  thought,  Arnold  again 
and  again  bore  witness,  and  in  the  verses  now 
referred  to,  he  speaks  frankly  as  a  disciple  to 
the  spirit  of  a  master.  He  declares  that  among 
the  thinkers  who  had  arisen  "  in  this  our 
troubled  day,"  three  only,  as  he  believed,  had 
seen  their  pathway  clear  before  them — Goethe, 
Wordsworth,  and  Senancour  himself ;  and  as 
Wordsworth  fails  us,  because  he  deliberately 
averted  his  eyes  "  from  half  of  human  fate," 
and  Goethe,  because  his  serene  and  splendid 
course  was  one  which  in  the  nature  of  things 
"  few  sons  of  men  may  think  to  emulate  "  ;  we 
turn  to  the  "  sadder  sage,"  Obermann,  and  con 
the  lesson  of  his  strangely  fascinating  pages, 
knowing  that  he,  too,  has  probed  deeply  into 
'*  the  hopeless  tangle  "  of  our  time.  And  what, 
then,  is  the  solution  offered  by  Senancour, 
and  how  does  Arnold  respond  to   his  message 


1 88         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATIOX. 

of  deliverance?  Scnancour  can  suggest  only- 
one  way  of  escape,  and  that  is  by  flight  to  the 
desert  ;'  and  for  Arnold,  such  an  abandonment 
of  the  struggle  of  the  modern  world  Is,  like 
Newman's  retreat  into  the  bosom  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  "  frankly  speaking,  impos- 
sible." ^ 

"  To  ihcc  we  come,  then  !  clouds  are  roll'd 
When  thou,  O  seer  !  art  set  ; 
Thy  realm  of  thought  is  drear  and  cold — 
The  world  is  colder  yet  ! 

"  And  thou  liast  pleasures,  too,  to  share 
With  those  who  come  to  thee — 
Balms  floating  on  thy  mountain-air. 
And  healing  sights  to  see. 

"  How  often,  when  the  slopes  are  green 
On  Jaman,  hast  thou  sate 
By  some  high  chalet-door,  and  seen 
The  summer  day  grow  late  ; 

"  And  darkness  steal  o'er  the  wet  grass 
AVith  the  pale  crocus  starr'd 
And  reach  that  glimmering  sheet  of  glass 
Beneath  the  piny  sward, 

'  Compare  the  words  put  into  Senancour's  mouth  in  Obcr- 
mann  Once  More  : 

"  Then  to  the  wilderness  I  fled — 
There  among  Alpine  snows 
And  pastoral  huts  I  hid  my  head. 
And  sought  and  found  repose." 
'  The  solution  offered  by  Einpedocles — that  of  suicide — is 
similarly  "  impossible  "  ;  highly  personal  as  much  of  the  poem 
must  be  taken  to  be. 


A/A  TT//E  W  ARNOLD.  1 89 

"  Lake  Leman's  waters,  far  below  ! 
And  watch'd  the  rosy  light 
Fade  from  the  distant  peaks  of  snow  ; 
And  on  the  air  of  night 


'&' 


"  Heard  accents  of  the  eternal  tongue 
Through  the  pine  branches  play — 
Listen'd,  and  felt  thyself  grow  young  ! 
Listen'd  and  wept — " 

It  is  a  seductive  picture,  this  of  the  quietude 
and  placidity  of  the  anchorite's  life.  The  spell 
of  its  peace  and  beauty  is  upon  the  poet  as  he 
lingers  over  its  entrancing  details.  But  sud- 
denly, his  healthier  nature  asserts  itself,  and 
the  charm  snaps. 

"  Away  ! 
Away  the  dreams  that  but  deceive 

And  thou,  sad  guide,  adieu  ! 
I  go,  fate  drives  me  ;  but  I  leave 

Half  of  my  life  with  you. 

"  We,  in  some  unknown  Power's  employ, 
Move  on  a  rigorous  line  ; 
Can  neither,  when  we  will,  enjoy, 
Nor,  when  we  will,  resign. 

"  I  in  the  world  must  live  ;  but  thou. 
Thou  melancholy  shade  ! 
Wilt  not,  if  thou  canst  see  me  now, 
Condemn  me,  nor  upbraid." 

Arnold,  then,  finds  it  impossible  to  follow 
Senancour  to  his  mountain  hermitage,  and  to 


1 90         S  TUDIES  IN  INTERPRE  TA  TION. 

seek  relief  from  the  pressure  of  modern 
difficulties  by  systematically  ignoring  their 
power.  Yet  returning  to  practical  existence 
he  carries  with  him  the  stoical  inspiration  to 
live  his  life  in  action,  as  Senancour  had  lived 
his  in  silence  and  seclusion — keeping  himself 
"  unspotted  by  the  world." 

"  There  without  anger  thou  wilt  see 
Him  who  obeys  thy  spell 
No  more,  so  he  but  rest  like  thee 
Unsoil'd  ! — and  so  farewell." 

In  both  of  these  poems  it  is  impossible  not 
to  be  struck  by  tho  m-ns^  ^^  fr'>nc;f;;Trr  ..hw-M 
for  the  time  being  dominates  the  poet's  thought. 
Arnold  knows  that  he  has  fallen  upon  an  f  ra 
of  change,  that,  in  his  own"  words,  he  is  a  wan- 
derer  between  a  world  that  is  dead,  and  a  world 
that  IS  not  yet  born.  This  point  will  be  made 
more  clear  for  us  if  we  rememEcr  that  in  his 
interpretation  of  human  destiny  Arnold  really 
represents  a  stage  of  doubt  and  uncertainty 
between  the  revolutionary  faith  of  Shelley,  upon 
the  one  hand,   and   the   evolutionary  faith   of' 


Tennyson  and  Browning  upon  the  other.  The 
singer  of  The  Revolt  of  Islam  and  Prometheus 
Unboiuid  could  project  himself  imaginatively 
into  the  after-times  of  mankind,  in  the  firm  belief 
that  "  if  only  men  throw  off  their  shackles, 
and  assert  their  perfect  freedom  of  thought 
and  action,  there  is  reserved  for  them  a  dazzling 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  IQI 

future,  in  which  there  will  be  no  war,  no  crimes, 
no  government,  no  disease,  anguish,  melancholy, 
or  resentment.  Human  life  will  be  indefinitely 
extended  through  the  growing  power  of  mind 
over  matter  and  propagation  and  death  will 
cease  together."  '  Such,  indeed,  was  the  faith 
by  which  all  the  poets  of  the  revolution  had 
been  kindled  through  the  rich  and  glowing 
promises  of  the  early  period  of  continental 
enthusiasm  ;  it  was,  moreover,  a  faith  to  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  Shelley  himself  clung  tena- 
ciously, long  after  the  reaction  in  thought  had 
set  in,  sweeping  everything  before  it.  Before 
Arnold's  time,  the  belief  of  the  French  doctri- 
naires and  their  English  disciples,  in  the  rapid 
and  continuous  amelioration  of  men's  lot  on 
earth,  had  passed  away  like  an  opium-eater's 
dream,  and  a  period  of  cynicism,  apathy,  and 
moral  exhaustion  had  succeeded — a  period  of 
which  Senancour  had  been  one  of  the  most 
eloquent  exponents  and  of  which  Arnold,  as 
he  himself  confesses,  had  "  felt  all  the  spell,  and 
traversed  all  the  shade."  ^  But  meanwhile  the 
old  thought  of  progress  had  been  taking  fresh 
form  through  the  influence  of  the  rising  school 
of  evolutionary  thinkers,  who  sought  to  sub- 
stitute   for    the    exploded    notion    of    lasting 

'  This  summary  of  Godwin's  doctrine  of  human  perfectibility, 
as  given  by  Mr.  Sully  in  his  Pcssimisju,  Chap,  iii.,  will  apply 
equally  well  to  the  creed  of  his  disciple  and  poetic  interpreter. 

^  Oberinann  Once  More. 


192  STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

betterment  through  catastrophe,  the  cardinal 
thought  of  gradual  unfolding  and  development. 
"  In  Comtism  the  doctrine  of  historical  progress 
received  a  new  expression  ' ;  while  "  once  more 
through  the  new  doctrine  of  evolution  as  ex- 
pounded by  Mr.  Darwin,  and  especially  by  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  the  modern  mind  has  grown 
habituated  in  anticipating  an  indefinite  expan- 
sion of  human  capacity  in  the  future."  '  Of 
this  new  and  pregnant  suggestion  of  slow  and 
orderly  growth  Tennyson  had  already  become 
the  great  poetic  apostle.  But  to  Arnold,  in  the 
years  of  his  young  manhood,  the  new  gospel 
did  not  yield  its  open  secret.  He  came  too 
late  to  share  in  the  ardor  of  the  revolutionists; 
the  milder  but  more  solid  promises  by  which 
the  evolutionists  Mndertook  to  renew  the  faith 
of  the  world,  he  also  failed  to  realize.  Thus 
it  was  that  by  his  own  admission  so  much  of 
his  earlier  poetry  was  weighted  down  by  the 
feeling  of  WcltscJimcrz  and  collapse,  repeating, 
though  in  a  less  clamorc^us  way,  the  minor 
melodies  of  the  post-revolutionary  school. 

It  should  of  course  be  noted  that  Arnold's 
despairing  utterances  gain  added  force  and 
significance  from  their  striking  contrast  with 
the  average,  rather  superficial  and  easy-going, 
optimism  of  his  day.  "  My  melancholy,  scio- 
lists say,  is  a  pass'd  mode,  an  outworn  theme."* 

'Sully,  op.  cit..  Chap.  iii. 

*  Stanzas  f  I  om  the  Grande  Chartreuse. 


A/A  T THE  W  A RNOLD.  1 93 

The  English  world  at  large  had  long  since 
thrown  off  the  apathetic  mood  induced  by  the 
experiences  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  century, 
and  its  temper  was  now  unusually  sanguine  and 
self-satisfied.  Men  of  the  most  diverse  schools 
of  thought  were  accustomed  to  point  with  un- 
disguised enthusiasm  to  all  the  material  advan- 
tages enjoyed  by  the  period  in  which  they  lived. 
Professor  Dowden  admirably  summarizes  the 
general  feeling  of  the  time  when  he  writes : 
"  The  ten-pound  householder  had  his  vote ; 
slavery  was  abolished  in  the  colonies  ;  the  evils 
of  pauperism  were  met  by  a  poor  law  ;  the 
bread-tax  was  abolished  ;  the  people  were  ad- 
vancing in  education  ;  useful  knowledge  was 
made  accessible  in  cheap  publications  ;  a  man 
could  travel  forty  miles  in  the  time  in  which 
his  father  could  have  travelled  ten  ;  more  iron, 
more  coal  was  dug  out  of  the  earth  ;  more 
wheels  were  whirling,  more  shuttles  flew,  more 
looms  rattled,  more  cotton  was  spun,  more  cloth 
was  sold.  The  statistics  of  progress  were  surely 
enough  to  intoxicate  with  joy  a  lover  of  his 
species."  *  Given  such  facts,  and  where,  in 
truth,  could  there  be  any  grounds  for  dissatis- 
faction ?  Such  was  the  question  which  found 
indignant  expression  in  the  writings  of  men  like 
Macaulay,  in  whom  the  shallow  self-complacency 
of  the  time  found  a  ready  and  vigorous  spokes- 

'  Victorian  Literature  (in  Transcripts  and  Studies,  pp.  l62-'- 

63. 

13 


V 


^ 


194         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

man ; '  such  was  the  question  which,  never 
without  calHng  forth  its  due  meed  of  popular 
applause,  came  from  the  orators  of  the  hustings 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land  ; 
such  was  the  question  which,  in  one  or  another 
form,  was  continually  on  the  lips  of  middle-class 
liberals,  and  gave  the  text  for  many  a  vigorous 
homily  in  the  newspapers  and  reviews  devoted 
to  the  progressive  cause.  Yet  amid  all  this 
astonishing  material  prosperity,  amid  all  this 
clatter  and  bustle  of  advance,  amid  all  the  cheap 
and  windy  rhetoric  of  the  Philistines,  and  their 
wholesale  denunciation  of  sentimentalism  and 
the  transcendental,  there  were  a  few  incom- 
patibles,  a  remnant  from  the  grand  majority, 
who  still  refused  to  believe  that  everything  was 
as  well  as  it  appeared,  a  few  dissident  voices 
raised  in  warning  or  reproach.  Of  these  voices 
Arnold's  was  one.  With  a  manner  about  as 
unlike  that  of  the  Sage  of  Chelsea  as  any  man- 
ner well  could  be,  our  own  poet  nevertheless 
undertook  to  remind  the  great  British  public, 
as  for  more  than  fifty  years  Carlyle  persistently 
reminded  it,  that  this  astonishing  material 
prosperity  of  which  it  made  boast  was  hiding 
from  its  vision  issues  of  infinitely  more  vital  im- 
portance, and  that  by  reason  of  its  sanguine 
temper   and   superficial  methods  of  judgment, 

'See,  e.g.,  bis  essay  on  Southey's  Colloquies  of  Society, 
and  the  concluding  paragraphs  of  the  famous  third  chapter  of 
his  ITtstorv. 


MA  TTHE  IV  ARNOLD.  I95 

it  was  in  danger  of  substituting  false  for  true 
standards  of  national  prosperity  and  individual 
development. 

No  reader  of  Arnold's  prose  work  needs  to  be 
reminded  of  the  constant  appeal  from  material 
to  spiritual  canons  made  in  the  pages  of  Ctiltiire 
and  Anarchy,  and  of  many  of  the  writer's  minor 
essays  ;  or  of  the  delicate  satire  and  pungent 
wit  with  which  so  many  of  the  conventional 
doctrines  of  a  mechanical  age  were  dissected 
and  laid  bare.  Already  in  his  poetry  he  had 
turned  away  from  "  the  barren  optimistic  soph- 
istries" of  the  "comfortable  moles"  of  his 
generation,  from  the  shallow  materialism,  and 
facile  self-confidence  so  characteristic  of  the 
time,  and  had  asserted  as  the  final  test  of 
development  the  criterion  of  spiritual  growth. 
In  one  poem,  in  particular,  the  verses  entitled 
Progress,  the  thought  of  what  constitutes  real, 
as  contradistinguished  from  merely  superficial 
advance,  is  very  clearly  set  forth. 

"  Say  ye  :  '  The  spirit  of  man  has  found  new  roads, 
And  we  must  leave  the  old  faiths,  and  walk  there- 
in '  ? 
Leave  then  the  Cross  as  ye  have  left  carved  gods, 
But  guard  the  fire  within  ! 

"  Children  of  men  !  the  unseen  Power,  whose  eye 
For  ever  doth  accompany  mankind. 
Hath  look'd  on  no  religion  scornfully 
That  men  did  ever  find. 


1 96         S  TUDIES  IN  IN  TERPKE  TA  TION. 

"  Which  has  not  taught  weak  wills  how  much  they 

can  ? 
Which  has  not  fallen  on  the  dry  heart  like  rain  ? 
Which  has  not  cried  to  sunk,  self-weary  man  : 
JVion  )inist  he  born  again  ! 

"  Children  of  men  !  not  that  your  age  excel 
In  pride  of  life  the  ages  of  your  sires, 
But  that  ye  think  clear,  feel  deep,  bear  fruit  well. 
The  Friend  of  man  desires." 

Indeed,  so  fundamentally  important,  so  pro- 
foundly and  essentially  needful,  did  this  ele- 
ment of  the  higher  life  in  man  always  seem  to 
Arnold  to  be,  that  he  was  tempted  to  prefer 
any  creed  which  would  help  to  hold  intact  the 
tiniest  germ  of  such  spiritual  vitality  to  the 
negativism  which,  in  its  scheme  of  human  ex- 
istence, contentedly  left  the  divine  unrecognized 
and  uncared  for  altogether.  This  comes  out 
strongly  in  a  little  poem,  which  is  all  the  more 
interesting  because  its  momentary  petulance  is 
in  such  curious  contrast  with  the  writer's  usual 
urbanity  and  self-composure. 

"  '  Man  is  blind  because  of  sin, 
Revelation  makes  him  sure  ; 
Without  that,  who  looks  within, 
Looks  in  vain,  for  all  's  obscure.' 

"  Nay,  look  closer  into  man  ! 
Tell  me,  can  you  find  indeed 
Nothing  sure,  no  moral  jilan 

Clear  prescribed,  wiiliuut  your  creed? 


A/A  TTHE  IV  A RNOLD.  1 9/ 

"  '  No,  I  nothing  can  perceive  ! 

Without  that,  all  's  dark  for  men. 
That,  or  nothing,  I  believe.' — 

For  God's  sake,  believe  it  then  !  "  ' 

It  is  in  the  light  of  these  considerations  that 
Arnold's  most  hopeless  and  forlorn  utterances 
have  to  be  interpreted.  It  was  the  thought 
that,  by  reason  of  its  pre-occupation  with  ma- 
terial things,  the  modern  world  was  virtually 
losing  its  hold  upon  the  unseen  realities  of  the 
spirit,  that  filled  him  with  apprehension  and 
dejection.  In  Bacchanalia,  or  The  New  Age — 
a  poem  which  in  its  introductory  lines  contains 
perhaps  the  most  perfect  bit  of  natural  descrip- 
tion to  be  found  anywhere  in  the  writer's  verse 
— he  dwells  with  severity  upon  the  noise  and 
turbulence,  the  extravagance  and  irreverence  of 
the  time,  and  explains  why  the  poet's  voice  is 
not  raised  to  swell  the  chorus  of  universal  self- 
glorification  ;  while  in  Dover  Beach — a  produc- 
tion which,  with  wonderfully  sustained  verbal 
felicity,  gives  expression  to  his  most  despairing 
mood — he  bewails  the  gradual  breaking-away 
of  the  faith  which  had  yielded  life  and  stimulus 
to  the  generations  of  the  past. 

"  The  Sea  of  Faith 
Was  once,  too,  at  the  full,  and  round  earth's  shore 
Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furl'd. 
But  now  I  only  hear 

'  Pis- A  Her. 


198         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar, 
Retreating,  to  the  breath 

Of  the  night-wind,  down  the  vast  edges  drear 
And  naked  shingles  of  the  world." 

But  the  utter  and  unrelieved  despair,  here  so 
finely  distilled  in  melody,  did  not  enter  as  a 
permanent  factor  into  the  disposition  of  Ar- 
nold's mind.  The  mood  of  Dover  Beach  was  a 
mood  above  which,  even  in  his  poetic  produc- 
tion, Arnold  became  more  and  more  able  to 
soar.  While  still  seeking  in  verse  the  medium 
of  his  criticism  of  life,  and  before  he  had  yet 
definitely  committed  himself  to  the  construc- 
tive prose  efforts  which  were  to  signalize  his 
general  change  of  temper  and  outlook,  he  had 
reached  a  point  of  view  from  which  the  world 
and  its  problems  appeared  to  him  under  a 
somewhat  more  favorable  light.  In  The  Fu- 
ture—di  poem  written  in  the  irregular  un- 
rhymed  verse  which  he  frequently  essayed, 
and  more  successfully  here  than  in  most  of 
his  other  similar  adventures — he  sets  forth  his 
faith  in  the  gradual  ordering  of  things  to  finer 
issues  than  the  present  may  seem  to  indicate, 
in  a  very  definite  way.  In  this  nobly  conceived 
and  splendidly  sustained  allegory,  the  history 
of  humanity  is  traced  out  under  the  figure  of  a 
mighty,  ever-flowing  stream.  Man  is  a  wan- 
derer from  his  birth,  and  as  he  glides  down  the 
current  of  existence,  he  is  fain  to  look  now 
backwards,  now  forwards,  and  dream 


MA  TTHE  W  A  RNOLD.  1 99 

"  Of  the  lands  which  the  river  of  Time 
Had  left  ere  he  woke  on  its  breast, 
Or  shall  reach  when  his  eyes  have  been  closed," 

No  one  can  hope  to  see  the  green  earth  on 
the  banks  of  the  stream  as  it  looked  to  those 
who  came  from  the  virgin  country  nearer  the 
source.  In  verses  which  recall  Clough's  con- 
stant yearning  for  a  simpler  and  less  sophisti- 
cated relation  with  the  world  than  is  possible 
to  most  of  us  to-day,  Arnold  tells  us  that  no 
maiden  now  can  read  into  her  bosom  as  clearly 
as  Rebekah  read  into  her's  as  she  sat  at  even- 
tide by  the  palm-shaded  well,  and  no  bard  can 
have  such  a  near  and  high  vision  of  God  as 
came  to  Moses,  as  he  lay  in  the  night  by  his 
flock,  on  the  star-lit  Arabian  waste.  So  much 
we  have  to  regret — the  fine  and  pure  freshness, 
the  spontaneity,  the  zest  and  joyousness  of 
earlier  life,  have  for  ever  passed  from  our  view. 

"  This  tract  which  the  river  of  Time 
Now  flows  through  with  us  is  the  plain. 
Gone  is  the  calm  of  its  earlier  shore. 
Border'd  by  cities  and  hoarse 
With  a  thousand  cries  is  its  stream. 
And  we  on  its  breast,  our  minds 
Are  confused  as  the  cries  which  we  hear, 
Changing  and  shot  as  the  sights  which  we  see." 

There  are  moments,  therefore,  when  it  is  only 
too  natural  that  we  should  feel  that  the  old  re- 


200         STUDIES  I  AT  INTERPRETATIOIV. 

pose  has  fled  ;  that  the  din  and  confusion  of 
h'fc  \\ill  increase  as  the  years  go  by  ;  that  peace 
and  quietude  will  come  not  to  us  again.  Yet 
the  future  may  after  all  hold  better  things  in 
store  for  us  than  we  are  sometimes  apt  to  an- 
ticipate.    For 

"  Haply,  the  river  of  Time — 
As  it  grows,  as  the  towns  on  its  marge 
Fling  their  wavering  lights 
On  the  wider,  statelier  stream — 
May  acquire,  if  not  the  calm 
Of  its  early  mountainous  shore, 
Yet  a  solemn  peace  of  its  own. 
And  the  width  of  the  waters,  the  hush 
Of  the  grey  expanse  where  he  floats. 
Freshening  the  current  and  spotted  with  foam. 
As  it  draws  to  the  ocean,  may  strike 
Peace  to  the  soul  of  the  man  on  its  breast, — 
As  the  pale  waste  widens  around  him, 
As  the  banks  fade  dimmer  away, 
As  the  stars  come  out,  and  the  night-wind 
Brings  up  the  stream 
Murmurs  and  scents  of  the  infinite  sea." 

The  second  stanzas  to  Senancour — Obermann 
Once  More — contain  an  even  distincter  enuncia- 
tion of  Arnold's  more  sanguine  thought ;  and 
they  are  especially  valuable  to  the  student  by 
reason  of  the  clearness  with  which  in  them  he 
defines  his  position,  and  emphasizes  the  grounds 
of  the  faith  that  is  in  him.     The  immediate  oc- 


MA  TTHE IV  A  RNOLD.  20 1 

casion  of  the  production  was  a  second  visit 
paid  by  the  writer,  many  years  after  his  first, 
to  the  Alpine  scenes  rendered  dear  to  him  by 
association  with  the  memory  of  his  early  teacher; 
and  the  greater  part  of  the  poem  is  made  up  of 
verses  put  by  Arnold  into  Senancour's  mouth 
for  the  purpose  of  bringing  out  the  shifting 
conditions  of  the  modern  world,  and  the  fresh 
hope  that  may  well  come  to  us  all  from  the 
careful  study  of  them  in  contrast  with  the  im- 
mediate past.  This  long  speech,  with  its  broad 
and  fine  interpretation  of  history,  opens  with 
the  splendid  and  often  quoted  description  of 
Roman  civilization  just  before  the  rise  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  of  the  tremendous  and  far-reaching 
changes  wrought  by  the  influence  of  the  new 
religion.  Following  the  course  of  the  ages, 
Senancour  is  then  made  to  portray  the  gradual 
decline  of  living  faith,  and  the  sapping  of  the 
creeds  upon  which  the  hope  of  the  older 
generations  had  been  founded ;  with  the  con- 
sequent slow  but  certain  lapse  of  mankind 
into  formalisms,  moral  sterility,  and  despair. 
There  needed,  then,  some  vast  new  stimu- 
lus to  rive  the  dry  bones  of  society,  "  and 
with  new  force  a  new-sprung  world  inform." 
Then  the  crisis  of  the  revolution  came.  The 
worn-out  cosmos  of  the  older  order,  which 
Senancour  and  his  contemporaries  had  known 
so  well,  crashed  into  ruins.  And  with  what 
result  ? 


202  STUDIES  IN  INTEA'PRETA  7'ION. 

"  The  sun  shone  in  the  new-wash'd  sky, 
And  what  from  heaven  saw  he  ? 
Blocks  of  the  past,  like  icebergs  high, 
Float  on  a  rolling  sea  !  " 

What,  then,  was  the  condition  of  things  by 
which  Senancour's  generation  had  found  itself 
confronted  ? 

"  The  past,  its  mask  of  union  on, 
Had  ceased  to  live  and  thrive. 
The  past,  its  mask  of  union  gone. 
Say,  is  it  more  alive  ? 

"  Your  creeds  are  dead,  your  rites  arc  dead, 
Your  social  order  too  ! 
Where  tarries  he,  the  Power  who  said  : 
See,  I  make  all  things  new  ? 

"  The  millions  suffer  still,  and  grieve, 
And  what  can  helpers  heal 
AVith  old-world  cures  men  half  believe 
For  woes  they  wholly  feel  ? 

"  And  yet  men  have  such  need  of  joy  ! 
lUit  joy  whose  grounds  are  true  ; 
And  joy  that  should  all  hearts  employ 
As  when  the  past  was  new. 

"  .'\h,  not  the  emotion  of  that  past. 
Its  common  hope,  were  vain  ! 
Some  new  such  hope  must  dawn  at  last, 
Or  man  must  toss  in  pain. 


MA  TTIIE IV  A  RNOLD.  203 

"  But  now  the  old  is  oat  of  date, 
The  new  is  not  yet  born, 
And  who  can  be  alone  elate, 
While  the  world  lies  forlorn  ?  " 

Senancour  then  refers  to  his  own  baffled 
career,  and  consequent  flight  to  the  wilderness 
of  Alpine  snows — an  abandonment  of  the 
world-problem  in  which,  as  we  have  already, 
seen,  Arnold  for  his  own  part  found  it  impos- 
sible to  follow  his  teacher.  But,  as  the  visionary 
speaker  goes  on  to  declare,  many  changes  have 
come  to  pass  since  he,  Senancour,  had  been 
called  upon  to  lay  down  the  burden  of  his 
"  frustrate  life  "  ;  and  the  men  of  the  new  gen- 
eration need  no  longer  be  crushed  down  by 
the  despondency  and  prostration  of  soul  which 
had  proved  the  inevitable  portion  of  their 
fathers.  And  so  Senancour's  long  address 
closes  with  a  stimulating  appeal  to  the  young 
poet  to  throw  aside  his  inertness  and  despair, 
and,  inspired  by  fresh  hope  himself,  to  carry 
such  hope  out  into  the  expectant  world. 

"  Despair  not  thou  as  I  despair'd. 

Nor  be  cold  gloom  thy  prison  ! 
Forward  the  gracious  hours  have  fared, 

And  see  !  the  sun  is  risen  ! 

"  He  breaks  the  winter  of  the  past  ; 

A  green  new  earth    appears. 
Millions,  whose  life  in  ice  lay  fast, 

Have  thoughts,  and  smiles,  and  tears. 


204         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

"  What  though  there  still  need  effort,  strife  ? 

Though  much  be  still  unwon  ? 
Yet  warm  it  mounts,  tlie  liour  of  life  ! 

Death's  frozen  hour  is  gone  ! 

"  The  world's  great  order  dawns  in  sheen, 

After  long  darkness  rude, 
Divinelier  imaged,  clearer  seen. 

With  happier  zeal  pursued. 

"  With  hope  extinct  and  brow  composed, 

I  mark'd  the  present  die  ; 
Its  term  of  life  was  nearly  closed, 

Yet  it  had  more  than  I. 

"  But  thou,  though  to  the  world's  new  hour 
Thou  come  witli  aspect  marr'd. 

Shorn  of  the  joy,  the  bloom,  the  power 
Which  best -befits  its  bard — 

"  Though  more  than  half  thy  years  be  past, 
And  spent  thy  youthful  i^rime  ; 

Though,  round  thy  firmer  manhood  cast, 
Hanii  weeds  of  our  sad  time 


*o 


"  Whereof  thy  youth  felt  all  tlie  spell, 

And  traversed  all  the  shade — 
Though  late,  though  dimm'd,  though  weak,  yet  tell 

I-lo])e  to  a  world  new-made  ! 

"  Help  it  to  fill  that  deep  desire, 

The  want  that  rack'd  our  brain, 
Consum'd  our  heart  with  thirst  like  fire, 

Immcdicaljle  pain  ; 


MA  TTHE  W  ARNOLD.  20$ 

"  Which  to  the  wilderness  drove  out 

Our  life,  to  Alpine  snow, 
And  palsied  all  our  word  with  doubt, 

And  all  our  work  with  woe — 

"  What  still  of  strength  is  left,  employ 

That  end  to  help  attain  : 
One  common  wave  of  thought  and  joy 

Lifting  mankind  again  !  " 

The  vision  ends ;  but  outside  nature  seems 
to  take  up  its  cheering  influences.  The  poet, 
awaking  as  from  sleep,  gazes  out  across  "  Son- 
chaud's  piny  flanks  "  and  the  "  blanch'd  sum- 
mit bare  of  Malatrait,"  and  behold,  the  dawn 
of  a  new  day  greets  him.     For 

"  Glorious  there  without  a  sound 
Across  the  glimmering  lake. 
High  in  the  Valais-depth  profound, 
I  saw  the  morning  break  !  " 

V 

V. 

To  complete  this  slight  sketch  of  Arnold's 
work  as  a  poet,  it  remains  to  speak  in  brief  of 
two  distinctive  features  of  hi^;  vpi-c;p — his  irL- 
tense  feeling  for  nature,  and  his  unvarying..iru- 
sistence  upon  the  supremacy  of  conduct  and 
duty.  These  familiar  characteristics  must  de- 
tain us  for  a  moment,  inasmuch  as  they  are 
both  vitally  related  to  his  general  philosoioky 

nnifp,  dit;^,]t;c:pH   in  thp  fni-pgning-  pa^pg 


y\ 


206         STUDIES  IN  INTEKPRETATION. 

In  his  treatment  of  nature  Arnold  comes  be- 
fore us  as  a  close   follower  of  one  of  his  ac- 
knowledged spiritual  masters,  Wordsworth,  to 
^-^(  the  inspiration,  and  especially  to  the  "  healing 

power  "  of  whose  poetry,  he  more  than  once 
I     bore  emphatic  testimony. 

"  He  spoke,  and  loosed  our  hearts  in  tears. 
He  laid  us,  as  we  lay  at  birth 
On  the  cool  flowery  lap  of  earth, 
Smiles  broke  from  us,  and  we  had  ease  ; 
The  hills  were  round  us,  and  the  breeze 
Went  o'er  the  sunlit  fields  again  ; 
Our  foreheads  felt  the  wind  and  rain. 
Our  youth  return'd  for  there  was  shed 
On  spirits  that  had  long  been  dead, 
Spirits  dried  up  and  closely  furl'd. 
The  freshness  of  the  early  world.'  " 

In  these  lines  he  indicates  to  us  the  particu- 
lar nature  of  the  influence  which  he  realized 
had  been  exercised  over  his  life  by  him  whom 
he  elsewhere  speaks  of  as  "  a  priest  to  us  all  of 
the  wonder  and  bloom  of  the  world."  " 
r-"With  Wordsworth  as  his  guide,  then,  Arnold, 
sought  in  nature  a  temporary  refuge  from  tjie 
"  doubts,  disputes,  distractions,  fears/'  of  his 
owri_^iron  time  "  :  and  in  communion  with  her 
e  found  not  only  relief,  but  also  ?^  soofhii-|cr^ 
consojing.  and  uplifting  power. 

'  Memorial  Verses,  fSjo. 

■  The  Youth  of  A\xtiire — a  poem  which  should  be  read  along 
with  the  Memorial  Verses. 


MA  T  THE  IV  A  RNOLD.  20/ 

"  AjDollo  ! 
What  mortal  could  be-sick  nr  sorry  here  ? " 

exclaims  Callicles,  resting  on  a  pathway-rock  in 
the  forest  region  of  Etna,  in  the  gracious  hour 
of  early  dawn  ;  and  we  know  that  the  words 
are  inspired  by  the  poet's  own  experience  of 
many  such  an  escape  made  from  the  heat  and 
turmoil  of  the  world  to  scenes  like  these  that 
the  young  harp-player  describes.'  How  closely 
and  sympathetically  he  lived  with  nature,  with 
what  loving  and  attentive  glance  his  eye  marked 
the  changing  of  the  seasons,  the  alternations  of 
day  and  night,  of  shower  and  sunshine,  there  is 
scarcely  a  page  of  his  verse  that  does  not  show. 
He  felt Jittle. indeed  of  the  weird  charm  of  the 
ruHeraspects  of  sea  and  crag  and  sky,  for  his 
muse  was  after  all  more  urban  than  his  master's, 
and '' the  deep  authentic  mountain-thrill  "  sel- 
dom, .if_-evjer,  "  shook  his  page."  "^  But  that 
within  the  boundaries  imposed  by  his  tempera- 
mental limitations,  his  nature-poetry  is  of  the 
rarest  excellence,  no  reader  of  Thyrsis  and  The 
Scholar  Gypsy  needs  to  be  told. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  Arnold's  case  the 
so-called  moral  indifference  of  nature  to  man's 
joys  and  sufferings,  instead  of  jarring  upon  the 
feelings  or  disturbing  the  mind,  becomes  an 
additional  influence  in  turning  his  spirit  nature- 

^  Empedoclt's  ofi  Etna,  Act  i.,  Scene  i. 

*  William  Watson,  In  Lalehain  Churchyard. 


208         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

virard.  What  others  gird  against  as  the  inscru- 
table, unresponsive  insensibility,  the  inflexible 
regularity,  of  cosmic  things,  he,  on  the  con- 
trary, finds,  not  oppressive  or  overwhelming, 
but  full  of  subtle  stimulus  and  meaning.  An 
appeal,  direct,  potent,  irrisistible,  is  made  by 
them  to  the  largely-developed  stoical  element 
in  his  own  character.  To  ^emulate  nature  in 
y  \  this  respect — to  possess  one's  own  soul  in 
quietude  despite  the  storm  and  turmoil,  the 
conflicts  and  alarms  outside — thus  becomes 
'  one  of  his  moral  ideals.'  He  revered  Goethe 
for  his  insight  into  the  "  weltering  strife  "  of 
his  epoch,  and  for  his  corresponding  power  of 
so  far  detaching  himself  from  "  the  lurid  flow 
of  terror  and  insane  distress,  and  headlong 
fate "  as  to  preserve  unjeopardized  his  own 
spiritual  equanimity.^  In  nature  he  seemed  to 
find  not  only  the  calmness  and  repose  for  which 
he  yearned,  but  also  a  majestic  serenity  and 
composure  in  admirable  contrast  with  the  fret 
and  fume,  the  hurry  and  worry  of  our  own  little 
bewildered  human  lives.  Thus  he  could  write, 
touching  deftly  upon  the  poet's  sensitiveness 
and  endowment  of  large  vision  : 

"  Before  him  he  sees  life  unroll, 

A  placid  and  continuous  whole — 

'  See,  for  example,  Resignation, Self -Dependence. Quiet  Work, 
r  Religious  Isolation,  Morality.     The  well-known  conclusion  of 
Sohrab  and Rustum  is  interesting  in  this  connection. 
^Memorial  ]^erses,  iSjo. 


MA  TTHE  W  ARNOLD.  209 

That  general  life  which  does  not  cease, 
Whose  secret  is  not  joy  but  peace  ; 
That  life  whose  dumb  wish  is  not  miss'd 
If  birth  proceed,  if  things  subsist ; 
The  life  of  plants  and  stones  and  rain, 
The  life -he  craves — if  not  in  vain 
Fate  gave,  what  chance  shall  not  control. 
His  sad  lucidity  of  soul.  " 

And,  again,  at  the  close  of  the  same  poem  : 

"  Enough,  we  live  ! — and  if  a  life. 
With  large  results  so  little  rife, 
Though  bearable,  seem  hardly  worth 
This  pomp  of  worlds,  this  pain  of  birth  ; 
Yet,  Fausta,  the  mute  turf  we  tread. 
The  solemn  hills  around  us  spread. 
This  stream  which  falls  incessantly. 
The  strange-scraw'd  rocks,  the  lonely  sky, 
If  I  might  lend  their  heart  a  voice, 
Seem  to  bear  rather  than  rejoice. 
And  even  could  the  intemperate  prayer 
Man  iterates,  while  these  forbear, 
For  movement,  for  an  ampler  sphere, 
Pierce  Fate's  impenetrable  ear  ; 
Not  milder  is  the  general  lot 
Because  our  spirits  have  forgot. 
In  action's  dizzying  eddy  whirl'd, 
The  something  that  infects  the  world."  ' 

And  yet,  once  more,  in  that  beautiful  little 
suburban  idyl,  the  Lines  Written  in  Kensington 
Gardens  : 


'  Resignation. 


14 


2 1 0         STUDIES  IN  IN TERPRE TA  TION. 

"  In  the  huge  world  which  roars  hard  by, 
Be  others  happy  if  they  can  ! 
But  in  my  helpless  cradle  I 

Was  breathed  on  by  the  rural  Pan. 

"  I,  on  men's  impious  uproar  hurl'd, 
Think  often,  as  I  hear  them  rave, 
That  peace  has  left  the  upper  world, 
And  now  keeps  only  in  the  grave. 

*'  Yet  here  is  peace  for  ever  new  ! 

When  I  who  watch  them  am  away. 
Still  all  things  in  this  glade  go  through 
The  changes  of  their  (]uiet  day. 


"  Calm  soul  of  all  things  !  make  it  mine 
To  feel,  amid  the  city's  jar, 
That  there  abides  a  peace  of  thine, 
Man  did  not  make  and  cannot  mar. 

"  The  will  to  neither  strive  nor  cry, 

The  power  to  feel  with  others  give  ! 
Calm,  calm  me  more,  nor  let  me  die 
Before  I  have  begun  to  live.  " 

In  regard  to  the  second  point  above  referred 
to — the  dominance  of  the  ethical  note  in 
Arnold's  work — little  needs  here  to  be  said. 
Whatever  niay  be  our  individual  relation  to  the 
man's  life  and  thought,  we  are  bound  to  regard 
Arnold  as  the  ideal  teacher — as  the  poet  who, 
beyond  all  others  of  his  generation,  accepted  it 


MA  TTHE  W  ARNOLD.  2 1 1 

as  his  special  mission  to  keep  the  standard  of 
duty  unfurled  upon  the  battlements  of  song. 
For  him,  conduct  was  the  supreme,  the  ever- 
imperious  word.  It  constituted  the  one  cen- 
tral and  abiding  theme  to  which,  no  matter 
what  might  be  the  immediate  topic  engaging 
his  attention,  he  always  returned  with  the  same 
steady  insistence,  the  same  fine  insight,  the 
same  lofty  and  uncompromising  purpose. 

To  Arnold,  human  life  in  its  higher  develop- 
ments presented  itself  as  a  stern  and  strenuous 
affair.  The  many  might  choose  to  abandon 
themselves,  like  fools  of  chance,  to  the  current 
of  outward  circumstance,  and  trust  to  fate  to 
bring  them  safely  through  *  ;  for 

"  Most  men  eddy  about 
Here  and  there — eat  and  drink 
Chatter,  and  love,  and  hate. 
Gather  and  squander,  are  raised 
Aloft,  are  hurl'd  in  the  dust, 
Striving  blindly,  achieving 
Nothing  ;  and  then  they  die."* 

He,  however,  belonged  to  those  others — the 
small  minority  — 

'  "  We  do  not  what  we  ought, 
What  we  ought  not  we  do, 
And  lean  upon  the  thought 
That  chance  will  bring  us  through." 

Empcdocles  on  Etna,  Act  i.,  Scene  2. 

'  Rugby  Chapel. 


212         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

"  Whom  a  thirst 
Ardent,  unquenchable,  fires, 
Not  with  the  crowd  to  be  spent, 
Not  without  aim  to  go  round. 
In  an  eddy  of  purposeless  dust. 
Effort  unmeaning  and  vain."  ' 

But  the  path  of  advance  to  which  the  select 
few — the 'remnant  as  distinguished    from  the 
majority" — thus  stand  self-committed,   is  one 
that    leads    through    dangers    and     difficulties 
without    number — a    "long,    steep,    journey," 
indeed  !     To  "  strain  on  "  with  "  frowning  fore- 
heads" and  "  lips  sternly  compress'd,"  fighting 
inch    by  inch  through   the   darkness    and    the 
tempest,  often  without  friend  or  companion  on 
the    perilous    road — such    is    the    only  way  to 
reach  the    goal.     But   what   a    picture    of    the 
higher  life  of  the  spirit  is  thus  presented  to  us! 
Those  who  would  wish  to  see  the  problems  and 
responsibilities  of  individual  existence  treated 
as  matters  to  set  little  store    by — as    things  of 
no  very  serious  import,  which  in  certain  moods 
we  are  apt  to  overestimate — will  not  meet  in 
Arnold    a    poet    after    their    own    hearts.      Hc_ 
makes  no  attempt  to  lighten  the  burden  of  life 
—it  is  here  and  we  must  bear  it ;  all  he  can 
offer  to    do  is  to  show  us  how  to  strengthen 
ourselves,  that   we   may  carry  it  manfully,  and 

'  Rugby  Chapel. 

'  Sec  the  American  lecture  on  A'umbers. 


Jl/A  TTIIE  W  ARXOL.D.  2  I J 

without  childish  petulance.  That  our  course  of 
self-discipline  must  needs  be  fraught  with  infi- 
nite pain  and  trial — that  it  will  always  be  easy 
for  us  to  fail  and  difficult  to  succeed — that 
every  step  we  take  forward  and  upward  will  be 
the  result  of  labors  accomplished  "  with  aching 
hands  and  bleeding  feet  "  ' — with  such  declara- 
tions does  Arnold  come  to  us  and  strive  to 
rouse  us  from  flippancy,  nonchalance,  and  the 
careless  self-complacency  of  the  average  man 
of  the  world.  How  hardly,  indeed,  shall  any 
of  us  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  God  ! 

And  this  problem  of  individual  existence,  of 
conduct,  becomes  all  the  more  arduous  and 
complicated  because  of  the  danger  of  extremes. 
Most  men  may  accept  without  protest  the 
"  brazen  prison  "  in  which  their  lives  are  con- 
fined, giving  all  their  energies  to  "  some  un- 
meaning task-work  "  and  dying  at  last  "  unfreed, 
having  seen  nothing,  still  unblest."  From  such 
stultifying  conditions  a  few  impatiently  escape  ; 
and  of  such  few,  some  setting  forth  upon  "  the 
wide  ocean  of  life  anew"  loose  their  hold  of 
reality  altogether,  care  not  how  there  may 
prevail 

"  Despotic  on  that  sea 
Trade-winds  which  cross  it  from  eternity," 

and  thus  "  standing  for  some  false,  impossible 
shore"  of  aspiration  or  fancy,  make  shipwreck 

'  Morality. 


2  14         STUDIES  IN  INTERPRETATION. 

of  themselves,  and  perish,  miserable  and  un- 
availing.    Thus  the  terrible  question  faces  us — 

"  Is  there  no  lite,  save  these  alone  ? 
Madman  or  slave,  must  man  be  one  ?  "  ' 

Hemmed  in  on  all  sides  as  in  this  earth  "where- 
on we  dream "  by  the  "  high  uno'erleap'd 
Mountains  of  Necessity,"  "^  we  are  sooner  or  later 
made  to  realize  that 

"  Limits  we  did  not  set, 
Condition  all  we  do  "  ^ — 

and  that  with  all  our  boasted  freedom,  our 
spiritual  yearnings,  our  rhetorical  and  conven- 
tional phraseology,  it  must  ever  remain  pro- 
foundly true  that 

"  To  tunes  we  did  not  call  our  being  must  keep 
chime."* 

There  perchance  lies  the  central  crux  for 
those  who  scorn  to  remain  contented  inmates 
of  the  brazen  prison  wherein  most  men  pass 
their  days.  We  are  tethered  fast  to  stern  facts, 
and  the  danger  is  lest  we  should  wear  ourselves 
out  with  futile  strivings  for  the  impossible. 
Our  margin  of  possible  endeavor  is  "  narrower 

'  A  Summer  Night. 

^  To  a  Republican  Friend  :  Second  Sonnet. 
2  Ei7ipedocles  on  Etna,  Act  i.,  Scene  2. 
*  Ibid. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  21  5 

.  .  .  than  we  deem  ;  "  '  yet  by  the  frank  ac- 
ceptation of  our  limitations  and  the  careful 
economy  and  direction  of  our  powers,  we  shall 
be  privileged  to  discover 

"  How  fair  a  lot  to  fill 
Is  left  to  each  man  still."  " 

Thus  Arnold  comes  to  us  with  his  word  of 
quiet  but  lofty  encouragement : 

"  But  thou,  because  thou  hear'st 
Men  scoff  at  Heaven  and  Fate, 
Because  the  Gods  thou  fear'st 
Fail  to  make  blest  thy  state, 
Tremblest,  and  wilt  not  dare  to  trust  the  joys  there 
are  ! 

"  I  say  :  Fear  not  !     Life  still 
Leaves  human  effort  scope, 
But  since  life  teems  with  ill, 
Nurse  no  extravagant  hope  : 
Because  thou   must  not   dream,  thou  need'st  not 
then  despair  !  "  ^ 

It  is,  therefore,  in  aiding  the  individual  man 
towards  the  solution  of  the  doubly-complex 
problem  of  his  life  that  the  world's  great  sys- 
tems of  morality  have  been  of  the  highest  ser- 

^  To  a  Republican  Friend  :  Second  Sonnet. 

^  A  Summer  Night. 

^  Empedocles  on  Etna,  Act  i.,  Scene  2. 


2l6         STUDIES  IX  JXTERPRETATION. 

vice.  "  The  object  of  systems  of  morality  " — 
thus  Arnold  himself  states  the  matter,  in  his 
essay  on  Marcus  Aurelius — "  is  to  take  posses- 
sion of  human  life,  to  save  it  from  being  aban- 
doned to  passion,  or  allowed  to  drift  at  hazard, 
to  give  it  happiness  by  establishing  it  in  the 
practice  of  virtue.  ...  In  its  uninspired  as 
well  as  in  its  inspired  moments,  in  its  days  of 
languor  and  gloom,  as  well  as  in  its  days  of 
sunshine  and  energy,  human  life  has  thus 
always  a  clue  to  follow,  and  may  always  be 
making  way  towards  its  goal." 

Of  the  singularly  high  quality  of  Arnold's 
own  ethical  teaching,  and  especially  of  the 
moral  temper  by  which  that  teaching  was  in- 
spired, it  is  possible  to  speak  only  in  terms  of 
the  profoundest  admiration.  The  clear  sharp 
ring  of  the  noblest  stoical  note  is  heard  through- 
out his  verse.  Throwing  us  back  everywhere 
and  at  all  times  upon  the  element  of  personal 
character,  he  raises  us  above  the  seemingly 
fatal  influence  of .  chance  and  circumstance; 
points  within  for  the  ultimate  secret  of  strength 
and  success ; '  and  insists  that  in  the  perform- 
ance of  duty  itself  lies  our  one  certain  path — 
not  indeed  to  what  the  world  calls  happiness ; 

'  See,  e.g.,  Self -Dependence,  Religious  Isolation,  Palladium, 
and  the  magnificent  chant  of  Empedocles  in  Empedocles  on 
Etna — one  of  the  noblest  pieces  of  ethical  verse  to  be  found 
in  the  whole  range  of  English  literature,  and  fully  deserving 
of  the  praise  which  Mr.  Swinburne  has  lavished  upon  it. 


Jl/.^  TTHE  W  ARNOLD.  2  I  / 

to  tliat_  we  can  claim  no  prescriptive  right;' 
but  to  the  fine  s at i s i ac 1 1 o n " w!Tich~'BeToif gs  to 
the  feeling  of  steady  manhood,  and  our  sense 
of  superiority  to  those  environing  forces  which 
constantly  do  battle  against  the  soul.  In  the 
passage  just  above  quoted,  he  lays  stress,  it 
will  be  observed,  upon  life's  uninspired  mo- 
ments, upon  the  days  of  languor  and  gloom 
through  which  the  strongest  must  necessarily  be 
called  upon  to  pass.  Even  then,  he  asserts, 
we  may  still  have  our  clue  to  follow,  may  still 
make  headway  towards  our  goal.  Truly  it  is 
characteristic  of  the  writer  of  these  splendid 
lines  that  in  the  mood  of  the  lowest  and  most 
abject  despair  that  anywhere  finds  expression 
in  his  poetry,  it  is  to  the  same  final  conception 
of  conduct  and  duty,  to  the  same  central 
thought  of  the  pov/er  and  responsibility  of  the 
individual,  that  he  still  returns,  secure  of  find- 
ing there  the  relief  and  inspiration  which  the 
outer  world  is  no  longer  able  to  yield.  He  has 
sung  for  us,  in  Dover  Beach,  of  the  century's 
collapse  of  faith,  and  of  the  hopelessness  and 
confusion  with  which  his  own  mind  is  filled. 
Does  he,  therefore,  feel  impelled  to  abandon 
the  conflict  of  life  altogether — to  submit  him- 

^  "  Could'st  thou,  Pausanias,  learn 
How  deep  a  fault  is  this  ; 
Could'st  thou  but  once  discern 
Thou  hast  no  right  to  bliss, 
No  title  from  the  gods  to  welfare  and  repose,"  etc. 
— Empedocles  on  Etna,  in  the  chant  just  referred  to. 


2l8  STUDIES  IN  INTERPKRTATION. 

self  to  what  seems  the  stronger  force  of  destiny, 
and  so  float  down  the  stream  of  tendency  to 
"dull  oblivion"  and  "  the  devouring  grave?" 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  just  then  that  he  feels  it 
most  imperatively  needful  for  his  higher  man- 
hood to  declare  itself  : 

"  Ah,  love,  let  us  be  true 
To  one  another  !  for  the  world,  which  seems 
To  lie  before  us  like  a  land  of  dreams. 
So  various,  so  beautiful,  so  new, 
Hath  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light. 
Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain  ; 
And  we  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain 
Swept  with  confused  alarms  of  struggle  and  flight 
Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night." 

Joy  and  sorrow,  light  and  darkness,  belong  to 
the  world  outside  us  ;  but  "  't  is  in  ourselves 
that  we  are  thus  or  thus." 

And  yet  high,  noble,  in  every  way  admirable 
as  Arnold's  moral  temper  and  teaching  alike 
are,  it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  they 
could  ever  be  popularized — ever  be  made  of 
much  service  to  any  save  a  few  out  of  the 
world's  "  complaining  millions  of  men." 
Arnold  himself,  as  it  seems  to  us,  has  passed 
judgment  on  his  own  ethical  position  and  out- 
look in  the  fine  sentences  in  which  he  discusses 
the  highly  emotionalized  utterances  of  Christian 
morality  with  the  classic  stoicism  to  which  con- 
fessedly his    intellectual  indebtedness  was  so 


MA  TTHE  W  A  RNOLD.  2  1 9 

great.  "  The  mass  of  mankind,"  he  writes, 
"  can  be  carried  along  a  course  full  of  hardship 
for  the  natural  man,  can  be  borne  over  the 
thousand  impediments  of  the  narrow  way,  only 
by  the  tide  of  a  joyful  and  bounding  emotion. 
It  is  impossible  to  rise  from  reading  Epictetus 
or  Marcus  Aurelius  without  a  sense  of  con- 
straint and  melancholy,  without  feeling  that  the 
burden  laid  upon  man  is  well-nigh  greater  than 
he  can  bear."  '  And  again  :  "  '  Lead  me,  Zeus, 
and  Destiny,'  says  the  prayer  of  Epictetus, 
'  whithersoever  I  am  appointed  to  go  ;  I  will 
follow  without  wavering  ;  even  though  I  turn 
coward  and  shrink,  I  will  have  to  follow  all  the 
same.'  The  fortitude  of  that  is  for  the  strong, 
for  the  few ;  even  for  them  the  spiritual  atmos- 
phere with  which  it  surrounds  them  is  bleak 
and  gray.  But  '  Let  thy  loving  spirit  lead  me 
forth  into  the  land  of  righteousness  ' ;  — '  The 
Lord  shall  be  unto  thee  an  everlasting  light, 
and  thy  God  thy  glory  '  ;  '  Unto  you  that  fear 
my  name  shall  the  sun  of  righteousness  arise 
with  healing  in  his  wings,'  says  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;  '  Born,  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of 
the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God  ; ' 
'  Except  a  man  be  born  again,  he  cannot  see 
the  kingdom  of  God  '  ;  '  Whatsoever  is  born  of 
God,  overcometh  the  world.'  says  the  New. 
The  ray  of  sunshine  is  there,  the  glow  of  a 
divine  warmth ; — the  austerity  of  the  sage 
*  Marcus  Aurelius  {Essays,  i. ,  p.  346). 


/  W-^K. 


220         STUDIES  IJV  INTERrRETATIOiV. 

melts  away  under  it,  the  paralysis  of  the  weak 
is  healed  ;  he  who  is  vivified  by  it  renews  his 
strength  ;  *  all  things  are  possible  to  him  ' ; 
'  he  is  a  new  creature.'  "  ' 

Now,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  in  Arnold's 
poetry  "  the  mass  of  mankind  "  can  hardly  be 
expected  to  find  the  tide  of  "  joyful  and  bound- 
ing emotion,"  which  he  tells  us  is  so  essential 
for  their  welfare  and  growth.  It  is  impossible 
to  rise  from  the  perusal  of  his  pages  without 
experiencing,  as  he  confessed  that  he  ex- 
perienced in  reading  Epictetus  and  Marcus 
Aurelius"a  sense  of  constraint  and  melancholy," 
a  haunting  feeling  "  that  the  burden  laid  upon 
man  is  well-nigh  greater  than  he  can  bear." 
The  "ray  of  sunshine"  rarely  irradiates  his 
noblest  poetry  ;  the  "  glow  of  a  divine  warmth  " 
hardly  ever  melts  "  the  austerity  of  the  sage." 
Yet  we  would  not  take  leave  of  Arnold  with 
our  emphasis  upon  any  of  the  negative  aspects 
of  his  work.  There  are  some  to-day,  there  will 
surely  be  still  more  in  the  future,  upon  whom 
his  splendid  influence  must  needs  make  itself 
felt.  To  a  few  at  least  in  each  generation, 
Arnold  will  seem  the  ideal  teacher — the  most 
helpful,  the  most  beneficent,  the  most  pro- 
foundly satisfactory  of  guides,  counsellors, 
friends.  And  in  an  age  that  is  prone  to  sen- 
sationalism, extravagance,  wild  thinking  and 
wilder  acting, — in    an    age   that    loves    quack 

^  A/arc  us  A  iirelius  {Essays,  i.,  p.  347). 


MA  TTIIE  W  ARNOLD.  22  I 

remedies,  and  is  hysterically  ready  to  follow 
every  self-constituted  blind  leader  of  the  blind 
— it  is  something  indeed  to  have  had  a  counter- 
acting power  such  as  his — so  calm  and  so  far- 
reaching,  so  evenly-balanced  and  benign. 

THE    END. 


WORKS  IN  LITERATURE 

RICHARDSO^I  (Charles  F.,  Professor  of  Literature  in  Dartmouth  College). 
American  Literature,  1607-1885.  2  vols.,  8vo,  pp.  xx.  +  535,  456,  $6  00 
College  edition,  two  volumes  in  one,  8vo,  half  leather      .  .  .  3   5° 

Part  I. — The  Development  of  American  Thought. 

Part  II.— American  Poetry  and  Fiction. 

"A  book  that  is  a  credit  to  the  writer  and  to  the  nation,  and  which  has  a  grand  iut\ire"—Hari- 

ford  Post.  .  T.        1.        \ 

"It   is   the   most   thoughtful   and  suggestive   work   on   American    hterature   that   has    been 

published." — Bosto7i  Globe, 

TYLER  (Moses  Coit,  Professor  of  American  History  and  Literature  in  Cornell 
University).      A   History  of  American   Literature.      Vols.   I.   and  II. — 
The  Colonial  Time,  1697-1765.     Agawam  Edition,  Vols.  I.  and  II.  bound 
together,  cloth  ..........         $3  00 

"  In  its  historic  completeness,  in  its  studious  mastery  of  the  siil.ject,  in  its  diligent  devotion  to 
details,  in  its  flavor  of  illustration  and  extract,  and  its  stately  and  finished  style,  it  may  confidently 
he  expected  to  fulfil  our  idea  of  such  a  history,  and  a  place  hitherto  vacant  will  be  occupied  by  it 
beyond  the  danger  of  dispossession  for  many  years  to  come." — Literary  World, 

The  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution.    (In  preparation.) 

VAN  LAUN  (Henri).     The  History  of  French  Literature. 

3  vols,  in  one.     8vo,  beautifully  printed  and  bound  in  extra  cloth   .         $3  50 

"  Full  of  the  keenest  interest  for  every  person  who  knows  or  wishes  to  learn  anything  of  French 
literature,  or  of  French  literary  history  or  biography." — N.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

JUSSERAND  (J.  J.).     A  Literary  History  of  the  English  People.     To  be 

completed  in  three  volumes.     Sold  separately. 
Part  I.— From  the  Origins  to  the  Renaissance.     Part  II.— From  the 
Renaissance  to  Pope.  (Noiu  Ready.)  Parts  III.  and  IV.  ( In  Preparation.) 

TAYLOR  (Bayard).  Studies  in  German  Literature.  With  an  Introduction 
by  the  Hon.  Geo.  H.  Boker.     8vo $2  00 

"  The  work  of  a  painstaking  scholar,  who  can  select  with  rare  discernment  what  should  come 
to  the  foreground  of  attention." — Literary  World, 

TUCKERMAN  (Bayard).     A  History  of  English  Prose  Fiction,  from  Sir        Z^ 
Thomas    Malory  to   George    Eliot.     Uniform   with   Taylor's   "German 
Literature."     Bvo,  cloth  ........         $1   75 

"  Mr.  Tuckerman's  volume  is  what  may  be  called  a  history  of  the  evolution  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  novel  as  illustrated  by  the  progress  of  Anglo-Saxon  civilization  and  morality.  The  author's 
style  is  easy  and  simple,  and  his  book,  both  from  its  subject  and  treatment,  interesting  throughout." 
—  The  Nation. 

BASCOM.    (John,    Late    President   of   the    University   of   Wisconsin).       The  C 

Philosophy  of  English  Literature.     i2mo        .         .         .         .        $1  50 

"  The  student  and  reader  of  English  Literature  will  find  this  volume  a  choice  contribution  to 

his  library  of  guides  and  text-books Professor  Bascom  helps  us  to  the  attainment 

of   a  knowledge   of    the   forces,   as   well   as   the   facts   essential    to   our  comprehension   of    the 

subject." — Chicago   Tribzitie. 

MORLEY  (Henry).     English  Literature  in  the  Reign  of  Victoria,  with  a 

Glance  at  the  Past.     Popular  Edition,  i6mo,  75  cts.  ;  library  edition,  8vo, 

uniform  with  Taylor's  "German  Literature"  .  .  .  .  .         $2  00 

"  This  thoroughly  excellent  work  presents  a  comprehensive  survey  of  the  literature  from  the 

time  of  Caedmon,   through   the   reigns  of  Elizabeth   and   Anne,    down   to   the   reign   of  Queen 

Victoria.     .       .       .     It  is  a  book  teachers  and  students  of  literature  will  find  not  only  exceedingly 

instructive,  but  helpful  in  their  work  as  educators.    It  should  be  in  every  well-chosen  library." — New 

England  Journal  o/ Education. 

WASHBURNE(Emelyn).  Studies  in  Early  English  Literature.  Uniform 
with  Morley's  "  English  Literature."     8vo $1    50 

"Young  students  of  literature  will  find  agreeable  and  intelligent  discourse  of  early  English 
writers  and  their  times  in  these  chapters." — N.    Y.   Observer. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  Publishers. 


Books  and  Their   Makers 
During  the  Middle  As^es 

A  Study  of  the  Conditions  of  the  Production  and  Distribu- 
tion  of  Literature  from  the  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  to 
the  Close  of  the  Seventeenth  Century. 

By  GEO.  HAVEN  PUTNAM,  A.M. 

Author  of  "  Authors  and  Their  Public  in  Ancient  Times,"  "  The 
Question  of  Copyright,"  etc.,  etc. 


In  two  volumes,  8°,  cloth  extra  (sold  separately),  each        -        $2.50 
Volume  I.     476-1600. 

PART  I. — BOOKS  IN  MANUSCRIPT. 
I.— The  Making  of  Books  in  the  Monasteries. 
Introductorv. — Cassiodorus  and  S.  Benedict.  — The  Earlier  Monkish  Scribes. — 
The  Ecclesiastical  Schools  and  the  Clerics  as  Scribes. — Terms  Used  for  Scribe 
Work.— S.  Columba,  the  Apostle  to  Caledonia.— Nuns  as  Scribes.-— Monkish 
Chroniclers.— The  Work  of  the  Scriptorium. — The  Influence  of  the  Scriptorium. — 
The  Literary  Monks  of  England.  — The  Earlier  Monastery  Schools.— The  Bene- 
dictines of  the  Continent.— The  Libraries  of  the  Monasteries  and  their  Arrange- 
ments for  the  E.\change  of  Books. 

II.  — Some  Libraries  of  the  Manuscript  Period. 
III.— The  Making  of  Books  in  the  Early  Universities. 
IV.— The  Book-Trade  in  the  Manuscript  Period. 
Italy.— Books    in    Spain.— The    Manuscript     Trade    in    France.— Manuscript 
Dealers  iu  Germany. 

PART    II. — TIIK    KARI.IER    PRINTED   BOOKS. 
I.— The  Renaissance  as  the  Forerunner  of  the  Printing-Press. 
11. —The  Invention  of  Printing  and  the  Work  of  the  First  Printers 
of  Holland  and  Germany. 
III.— The  Printer-Publishers  of  Italy. 

Volume  II,     1500-1709. 

IV.— The  Printer-Publishers  of  France, 
v.— The  Later  Estiennes  and  Casaubon. 
VI.— Ca.xton  and  the  Introduction  of  Printing  into  England. 
VII.— The  Kobergers  of  Nuremberg. 
VIII.— Froben  of  Basel. 

IX. — Erasmus  and  his  Books, 

X. — Luther  as  an  Author. 
XI.— Plantin  of  Antwerp. 
XII.— The  Elzevirs  of  Leyden  and  Amsterdam. 
XIII. — Italy:    Privileges  and  Censorship. 
XIV. — Germany:    Privileges  and  Book-Trade  Regulations. 
XV. — France  :    Privileges,   Censorship,  and  Legislation. 
XVI.— England  :    Privileges,  Censorship,  and  Legislation. 
XVII.— Conclusion  :    The  Development   of  the   Conception  of  Literary 
Property. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 
New  York  :  29  West  23d  St.  London  :  24  Bedford  St.,  Strand 


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<?EC'D  LD-IIBt 


bORL      DEC 


ug|     APR     81^7^" 

^pR8M97Q 


?  V  e  J) 


P.M. 


ORION      ,..i5v/10'90 

APR  2  7  fi* 


9EC2R-qfi7  r 


1967 


'JAMHZCOS 


Form  h9-10m-6,'52(A]855)444 


THE  LJbKAKl 

irrnVFRSilY  OF  CALIFOftWU 
r.OvS  ANGELES 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A  A      000  294  494    0 


